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Making curriculum links with homes and communities

7b What Student Teachers might do to make the Curriculum Reflective of Home and Community

  1. Home and community content in formal teaching contexts
    • local case studies to support history and geography
    • stories based on the children’s cultural backgrounds
    • using real life and popular culture materials in Maths, science, art
    • constructing and evaluating home and community texts
    • evaluating and reconstructing texts from popular cultures (Meacham 2004)
  2. Informal/third space contexts
    1. Transferring objects between home and school
      • Collections of significant home items used for discussion in Circle Time, writing stimulus and teaching word level knowledge. (Greenhough et al 2005).
      • Sending a named soft toy home with each Reception child in turn to report back to class on out of school experiences and feelings
      • Sending home palm tops, laptop computers, videocams, video recorders, digital cameras to help with homework and record community experiences
      • Sending home back packs of games and activity materials (Pahl 2005)
      • Home school writing journals (Graham and Johnson 2004)
    2. Representing home and community in the classroom
      • Reconstructing community scenarios in classroom role play using home learning strategies (Cook 2005)
      • Using digital literacies for real communication (e.g. email, msn, blogs, websites) http://www.children-go-online.net/
      • Using objects and texts from popular culture in play and early literacy (Marsh and Millard 2000; Marsh 2003; Marsh and Thompson 2003)
      • Creating school based “real life” enterprises (radio/TV stations, newspapers, cafes, shops)
    3. Moving out to the community and bringing the community in
      1. These links could include outside visits, use of City Learning Centres, visiting theatre and dance groups, speakers and artists. Making these links effective will usually depend on how well children are prepared for visits and the degree of follow up. See Ellis and Safford (2005), Gould (2002) and local museums and art galleries. Creative Partnerships nationally have a range of interesting projects. http://www.creative-partnerships.com/projects

See also Working With the Wider Workforce – Pam Craig, Museums & Galleries and Authors in Schools

In selecting links, student teachers should be aware that there will be a great deal of overlap between these categories. What is important is the extent to which making the link supports a two way flow of knowledge and skills between in and out of school learning to maximize children’s meaning making.

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Contents

  1. Introduction and Rationale
    1. Introduction
    2. Rationale
  2. Core Principles about Language and Learning
  3. Key Issues
    1. Key Issues in Language and Learning
    2. Key Issues in Assessment and Evaluation
    3. Key Issues in Management
  4. Suiting Links to Purposes
  5. Links to Inform Parents and the Community
    1. Overview of Informing Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Inform Parents
  6. Links to Support Parents
    1. Overview of Supporting Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Support Parents
    3. Case Study (i): Supporting parental awareness of curriculum and methodology
    4. Developing parents’ own abilities through Family Learning courses
  7. Links to Make the Curriculum Reflective of Home and Community
    1. Overview of Reflective Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Make the Curriculum Reflective of Home and Community
    3. Case Study (ii): Reconstructing a community scenario
    4. Case Study (iii): Using texts from the community culture
  8. References
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