Rose Griffiths
Professor of Education, University of Leicester
How we made the video 20 years ago
I’ve been looking back at our work in Leicester in the days of SureStart (and then Children’s Centres) twenty years ago. We wanted to show families with children under five how important they are, in getting children talking and getting children counting. We were keen to find ways of collecting or producing materials which our multi-ethnic and often relatively young families would feel were representative of their experience. At that time, the DVD was still a relatively new medium (overtaking videotape) but would mean we could give families direct examples of good things to do with young children which were inexpensive, enjoyable, repeatable and worthwhile.
We started with a DVD about talking and listening called ‘Getting Children Talking’ and when that proved successful, we embarked on ‘Getting Children Counting’. Our key audience was parents aged 16 to 30, but we hoped the content would also be useful in professional development sessions for early years practitioners.
For both DVDs, we wanted to feature some main messages to structure the film, using voiceovers. Our audience was multilingual, and we knew that some families in Leicester would not be able to access English yet. The City Council helped us identify four additional languages which would be especially useful to young families: that year, the major need was in Turkish, Bengali, Somali and French.
Main messages
We included a little leaflet with every DVD, to provide our main messages and to make the DVD easier to navigate for families and for practitioners. Our three sections were guided by the questions that our twelve families asked.
Part One, ‘Children learn about counting by listening, watching and doing, from a very young age’ was prompted by the question, ‘Are babies too little to learn about counting?’ Watch little Jamie’s mouth when his mum is counting as she does up his poppers!
Part Two, ‘Give children lots of chances to count things’, shows children counting when singing, going downstairs, playing football or throwing a balloon – and shows that children often keep counting even when they don’t know the numbers – they just make them up. Rahma’s big sister counting her plaits, like many of our film clips, shows how family members can include counting in comforting and playful everyday activities.
Part Three, answers common questions from families about recognising numbers and learning to write them, emphasising ‘Make time to enjoy using numbers together’.
Recruiting families to be filmed
I chose two SureStart centres to work with, with Community Education staff whom I had worked with previously and who knew their local families well. They helped find mums, dads or other family members from about a dozen families who would be willing to be filmed with their children at home. Of course, sometimes people said they didn’t think they did much that helped with early number, but Jill, Fatima or Dorothy spent time with each volunteer family to talk through a list of possible everyday things they might not have realised were useful and relevant. It wasn’t unusual to have a grown-up say, for example about counting while on a swing, ‘Oh, I didn’t think of that, because we just do it for fun’.
The filming process
Our film crew were two women from a local community project, one to film and one recording sound. An all-female crew made people feel more comfortable about having strangers in their home. Fortunately, both women were very adaptable – in one tiny kitchen, Tove had to perch on the draining board to get the best shot. Everyone had a list of the activities they had agreed to show and we found that children themselves sometimes suggested toys or ideas they wanted to have filmed, too. Jill or Fatima were always available to hold a spare baby, make tea, comb hair or do whatever was needed to stop people feeling flustered during their half-day of filming.
Choosing what to include
Jill and I watched all ten hours of film, to identify a longlist of potential sections. We were aiming at about 20 minutes altogether for the video; it took days to whittle it down. I also made notes to help us think about some of the differences between counting at home and counting in nursery or school. There were things to learn in both directions! For example, we realised that few families practised counting backwards; but we saw many more examples of family members counting actions (not just objects) than we had seen in schools. (See Mathematics Teaching 203, July 2007).
The Launch
Our afternoon ‘Film Premiere’ of the video was a delight. We invited everyone who had been involved, and our families brought along friends and neighbours. I don’t think any film premiere could have had more babies and toddlers in the audience. There was quiet as the lights went down and the music started, but then you could hear excited little voices calling out from all over the hall, ‘That’s my mummy!’ ‘That’s my sister!’. We gave everyone a copy for themselves and for nans and grandads, and distributed them free to every local library, all our SureStarts and to playgroups, childminders, nurseries and schools.
The future
Our families all gave permission for the film to be used for not-for-profit educational purposes. I’m really pleased that it’s now available on the Early Childhood Maths Group website. It was an ambitious project for a group of us who had never worked with film before; we learnt a lot and would no doubt do it differently now, as some bits might feel a bit slow, but I hope you have a chance to watch it. It’s always good to see a young child enjoying learning or practising something – even if it was twenty-odd years ago!
Rose Griffiths
Professor of Education, University of Leicester
Watch the video: Getting Children Counting
Leave a Reply