Analysis Of The Virtual School Bag

a) Funds of Knowledge are the essential cultural practices such as values and beliefs, languages, bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being that are embedded in the daily practices, experiences and routines of the families and communities (Moll et al. 1992).

The virtual schoolbag is the idea that all children upon entering the school will have a metaphorical backpack which is full of various cultural knowledges, experiences, practices and linguistic resources. However, only some children get to open their bags and make use of what is inside. Many children are not able to unleash their potential at school (Thompson 2003).

I feel that as a teacher I must unfold the contents of every virtual

She is 6 years old. She is the 2nd child of the three children. Jasmin’s father stated that Jasmin is always outgoing, confident and happy since she was young. She has a friendly disposition that allows her to make friends easily.

Jasmin's father, sister and herself all mentioned that Jasmin likes to do reading with them, plays console or online games in her spare time. Jasmin’s father highlighted that Jasmin loved drawing and painting. Her sister further emphasized the she is good at drawing and colouring of pictures.

Jasmin’s father stressed that Jasmin is vocal and expressive. She has a flair for oral language as she picks up words and vocabulary easily; she has shown interest in using the IT gadgets to surf internet independently using computer and tablet. Her sister further supported that Jasmin learns things through games.

It was evident that Jasmin is an active person as she likes to do sports such as swimming, jumping on the trampoline, going to the beach and dancing (refer to Appendix

She has exhibited her ability to recall literal information that was written in the text and summaries the main idea of it (Hill 2012). This showed that she has good understanding of the characters and events in the book. However, it was evident when interviewer asked her “What did Kate try to do to solve the problem? What else did she do?” She replied, “Try getting it out.” When the interviewer asked her, “How?” and she replied “By eating an apple” instead of giving a few more examples such as “playing with it”, “wiggled it” and “brushed it” which stated in the storybook. This had disclosed that she may neglect other key events in the story but focus on the main event when asked to summaries the story.

Jasmin has shown that she is less skilful in answering interpretive and inferential questions. These questions require children to go beyond the text and use their fund of knowledge coupled with inferencing skills to provide a feasible and accurate answer (Hogan 2011). For example inferential questions “What do you think Kate’s mum was thinking?”, “What was the important part of this story? Why?” Jasmin did not answer to the point as she could not associate it to her experiences, knowledge and lacking in inferencing