Early+Years+Learners+and+Funds+of+Knowledge

=Early Years Learners and Funds of Knowledge=

Funds of Knowledge is defined by Hill as “the tools, strategies and activities families engage in to live their lives... funds of knowledge are not taught directly, but come from shared activities with families and communities” (Hill, 2006, p57-8). A child's Fund of Knowledge encompasses their heritage, cultural differences, socio economic influences, religion and belief systems.

Throughout our observations as a group, investigating and exploring the ‘funds of knowledge’ of individual children we discovered that ascertaining a child’s funds of knowledge is imperative to tailoring your teaching.

We discovered as a group that engaging a child is of the upmost importance, creating an environment that is fun and interesting to each child is essential when creating a passion for learning. If the child is not engaged or confident in the activity or the topic, we believe they will not learn as much or perform as well as they possibly could.

Funds of knowledge are also important as a teacher to understand the resources the child has at home. Children have access to different levels of physical resources as well as emotional resources. Without ascertaining the child’s funds of knowledge as a teacher you will never know if their parents read with them regularly, encourage and reward academic progress or place little value on schooling. As a group we feel that a great teacher is one who does everything they can to enable a student to reach their full potential

Between the four students we interviewed as a group we created a ‘class’ of 4 children from upper-middle class families. All of these children aged between 6 and 9 years of age are very engaged with their schooling and as a result they are quite keen to read, write and learn. They each had access to a vast array of resources and come from families where education is highly valued. The parents of the children we interviewed were all employed in corporate management or teaching roles and are well educated themselves. These children within the classroom would be actively engaged but also constantly needing extension within their learning to continually keep them engaged and avoids boredom and complacency,