The personal messages, comments about behaviour, the heart symbol and song, use
of the term ‘spell’, reference to practice in the day-care centre and several references
to numbers each reflect the importance of the child’s socio-cultural contexts of
home and the community beyond home. These examples of Matt’s marks from just
one episode also show the tremendous knowledge he had developed about the dif-
ferent purposes of literacy by 3 years of age. Matt was making use of his observations,
drawing on a great deal of knowledge of marks, of meaning and about communi-
cating with others. He was also finding out the sort of responses his marks and
meaning might evoke from me, since I had only just arrived in Canada where he
lived – and the previous time I’d seen Matt he’d been a small baby.Pauline’s address
In their study of 4-year-olds learning in a home environment, Tizard and Hughes
(1984) documented many interesting conversations. One such conversation is
described in the following passage.
Pauline’s mother was discussing with her what she could say to a policeman if she
was lost. Pauline’s mother pointed out that you must say where you live. Pauline
replied ‘down by the grass’. Her mother was upset because she thought that Pauline
knew her address. Pauline may not have known the word ‘address’.CHILD: Eh?
MOTHER: Do you know your address?
CHILD: Yeah.
MOTHER: Yeah and what do you say to him?
CHILD: Um? I’ve ... I said ... (hesitates).
MOTHER: What number house?
CHILD: Um ... number six.
MOTHER: No, you don’t live at number six.
CHILD: What?
MOTHER: You say ‘My name is Pauline Robinson’.
CHILD: Yeah.
MOTHER: ‘And I live at seventeen ...’
CHILD: Yeah.
MOTHER: ‘ ... Fleet Flats’.
CHILD: Yeah.
MOTHER: You say it.
CHILD: Seventeen.
MOTHER: Sally does. She says it. (Sally is the older daughter.)
CHILD: Seventeen.
MOTHER: No. You tell him your name.
CHILD: Yeah. I say, ‘Seventeen Fleet Flats’.
MOTHER: Seventeen Fleet Flats.
CHILD: Yeah.28 Children’s Mathematics8657part 1b.qxd 04/07/2006 18:06 Page 28