This content provides a practical guide on how to write effective observations for early childhood education using the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) and its core document, "Belonging, Being, Becoming." It emphasizes using observations to analyze children's learning and development, particularly in numeracy, by linking them to EYLF learning outcomes and principles.
hi everyone and welcome to story time
with kate
let's talk about observations and how to
use eylf or early ease learning
framework to write successful
observations so here i drafted an
observation for you to help you with
understanding how i'm using a wildlife
and how i'm teaching my students who are
doing certificates three and diploma of
early childhood education and care
and bachelor students how to write
observations and use our key document
which is belonging being becoming
for analysis so this is the learning
story about two boys named lucas and aaron
aaron
aaron and lucas are both are interested
in numbers so it's
as you can see a very simple learning
story it starts with spontaneous
teaching moment and develops into some
interesting experience
so every learning story usually has a
title in my case i just named it
the biggest number because that's what
the story ends up with let's read it
together and then open uilf to see how
it can be useful for analysis
yellow notes
it all started with you both showing
interest uh in me writing something on a
posted notepad
had a range of pants and you both seem
to be intrigued by the smooth movements
of gel pen
lucas you noticed yellow paper i was
using and ask if you can use it
offer the pack of
post-it notes
you both started to experiment with pens
lucas drew a very detailed number and
one circle next to it
was it a zero or just a circle
aaron joined
aaron joined in and wrote numbers in
order one two three then you added one
and two circles zeros
what is this number lucas seemed
interested a hundred i said a hundred
wow aaron seemed quite excited to hear
that you both kept drawing numbers and
this time lucas wrote one and three
zeros can you guess what number is that
it's a very big number lucas invited us
to play guessing game you both kept
writing down the numbers with one and
many zeros for example one thousand ten thousand
thousand
one hundred thousand it fascinated you
that numbers change when you just add zeros
zeros
to further support your interest and
engagement i asked if you know what is
the biggest number in the world
and lucas looked puzzled while aaron
also had to sing
finally lucas exclaimed i know it's 10
10 10 10.
so this is the story this is evidence so
that's how you can document something
that might start as a jorting and then
evolve into more interesting
observation with analysis so learning
story is different from any type of
other observations because it is usually
social cultural so it involves children
as you can see
lucas and aaron it also sometimes talks
to children and their families it
celebrates learning and captures
meaningful moment of learning
so here you also can see that i included
both children and it's not just one child
child
so learning story is always inspired by
the ideas of vygotsky that children
learn from each other and alongside each other
other
so this is our story now we need some
analysis in my original story i do have
analysis but here i decided to leave it
uh open-ended so so we can think of what
does it mean for us in terms of learning
what do we see in these observations and
a lot of my students sometimes struggle
to find what they see so if you look at
our ey lf
yeah it says that um children um
educators and play-based learning all
these terms are described in the ey lf
and this framework has a vision yeah
which consists of three main ideas
belonging being becoming if we look at
these three ideas to start our analysis
so you can see that experiencing
belonging means that children belong to
family cultural group neighborhood or
wider community
so if i know these children i can see if
they're actually showing me that they are
are
experiencing belonging when they are
involved in play they basically show
that they feel very comfortable in the center
center
being is also a very important concept
so what does it tell us about these
children's sense of identity
are they interested in mass is it their
passion do they do math outside of preschool
preschool
also if you look at becoming this is
probably the most relevant key idea here
for our analysis can we use it
children identities knowledge
understandings capacities skills and
relationships change during childhood
they are shaped by many different events
and circumstances becoming reflects this
process of rapid and significant change
that occurs in the early years as young
children learn and grow so we can see
that children may need this cultural
knowledge of mathematics and numbers
because society requires it and it's
considered to be valuable by their
families if you know
lucas and aeron background and they are
from chinese australian families you
would also see that this knowledge yeah
about math
might be valuable also writing literacy
pre-literacy early emerging literacy
also might be part of them becoming more
competent learners so i will definitely
use this idea and how i'm going to use
it i can actually include the whole
quote in my analysis when i write to the feminists
