History:
Sesame street is a educational television show geared towards preschoolers (2-4). The show premiered in November of 1969 on National Educational Television Network (which is now Public Broadcasting Service). The show has been running for over 38 seasons with approximately four thousand episodes. The show is aired in one hundred and twenty countries across the world. [1]
The show uses puppets to teach mathematical skills, reading, and classification. It also teaches basic life skills; manners and social skills.
Footnotes:
[1] 2015, April 8. Sesame Street Debut. Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sesame-street-debuts
Sesame street is a educational television show geared towards preschoolers (2-4). The show premiered in November of 1969 on National Educational Television Network (which is now Public Broadcasting Service). The show has been running for over 38 seasons with approximately four thousand episodes. The show is aired in one hundred and twenty countries across the world. [1]
The show uses puppets to teach mathematical skills, reading, and classification. It also teaches basic life skills; manners and social skills.
Footnotes:
[1] 2015, April 8. Sesame Street Debut. Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sesame-street-debuts
Show Analysis:
Below is an analyze of Sesame Street. We have looked at four cognitive development skills the show expresses. We have provided examples of each skill from an episode. Also, we have included our overall thoughts on the shows performance and its educational purposes for the proposed age demographic.
Goal/intentions:
One main aspect of Sesame Street is being understand the goal of the character. Children must have an idea of what the person is trying to achieve. Studies have shown children as young as 12m can understand the end goal of an action.[1] An example of this being shown through Sesame Street is the episode called “Bye bye Birdie”. Baby Bear loses Ralphie the parrot. He has to look all over the street to try and find him. Children that have goal intentions must be able to identify that Ralphie has gone missing and the goal is to find him using cues like sounds and feathers to track him. Without the ability to do goal intentions the child would be confused by the entire episode and why they are trying to follow clues to find Ralphie.
Footnotes:
[1] Woodward, A.L. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal objects of an actor’s reach. Cognition, 69,1-34.
Animacy/ inanimacy:
The show uses a combination of humans and puppets to teach children. These puppets are given dynamic and featural cues so they are seen as appealing to children[1]. Elmo for example has a face that is configured like a human. He has a symmetrical face and even wears a smile. He has dynamic features like a human unlike his inanimate form. He swings his arms, he moves in a similar motion, and he has human like gestures. Studies show that children at 3 months old can tell human movement just from watching “point-light walker displays”[2]. Knowing this, children at a pre-school age can make this distinction of animate and inanimate based on movement. The creators of the show are successful in giving the puppets movements that are similar to humans. It also does not matter that the puppets feet are rarely if ever shown. The “point-light walked display” was manipulated and shown with an occlusion, meaning not all of the body and movements were visible to the viewers. Children at 9 months old could still make the distinction that the lights and movement they could see were animate human movements[3]. The show does a great job of taking into account all of the rules of animacy and applying them to their puppets to make them appear as lively as possible.
Footnotes:
[1]Dr. Warriner. “Conceptual 2” Lecture, Hamilton, March 10, 2015.
[2] Bertenthal, B.L, Proffitt, D. R., Spetner, N. B., & Thomas M. A(1985). The development of infant sensitivity to biomechanical motions. Child Development, 56, 531-543.
[3] Ibid.
Reading:
During the “Amazing Alphabet Race” episode we see how Sesame Street teaches reading skills. In this episode, children help Elmo find the letters of the alphabet in sequential order within other words around the street. An example of this task is the first letter “A” in the alphabet can be found in the world “Sesame”. Elmo has to find the rest of the alphabet under a time crunch. This task is more complex than it seems. This task involves children being able to read the words and understand what letters make up the words. To be able to complete this task children must have some letter awareness[1]. They have to be able to break up the words into their basic letters to find the letters of the alphabet. For example, if a child is looking for the letter “S” and sees the sign “Brussel sprouts for sale!” at a market they have to be able to realize the letter “s” appears five times within that sign. This is done by being able to read the words and break them up into their basic letters the alphabet. This is important because being able to break words into their separate letters leads to Phoneme awareness. Phoneme awareness is the smallest unit of sound in a word. An example is the word “bat” b” “a” “t” are all phonemes of the word just as the word “shovel” “sh” “o” “v” “el” are phonemes of the word[2]. Studies have shown being able to separate words into their separate letters leads to better phoneme awareness and spelling. This task is geared towards strengthening a child’s Phonological Awareness. Phonological Awareness is a child’s ability to detect and manipulate the component of sounds that compromise words[3]. This is exactly what children must do to complete this task. Children must be able to detect the different letters within a word to find the letters they need. It has been shown in studies that children who have practice earlier on in life with phonological awareness are 4-24 months more advances in their reading skills in comparison to children with no previous training. Sesame street is starting to prepare children early for reading skills by using techniques like phonological awareness and detection. An interesting fact to note is this show is geared towards preschoolers (2-4 years old). Most studies of phonological awareness are done on 4 year olds and older[4]. It would be interesting to see if children of 2-4 years old can understand this task of letter distinction.
Footnotes:
[1] Dr. Warriner. “Reading, Student Experiment Demo” Lecture, Hamilton, March 30, 2015.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read: A casual connection. Nature, 310, 419-421.
Final Thoughts:
Overall I found Sesame Street to be fairly educational. It was geared towards an appropriate age demographic because it encompassed the cognitive developmental skill children have at a preschool age. This includes language, goal intentions etc. I also enjoyed that the subject matter of the shows are diverse and current. The "Amazing Alphabet Race" "Game of Chairs" "House of Bricks" are all episodes that are based (fairly well if I might add) off popular and current television shows. This is not only appealing to the changing demographic of the show but to parents or caregivers. Usually the children will not be watching these shows by themselves and will be supervised by a parent or caregiver. These spoof episodes are great for an older demographic because the parents and caregivers will also be entertained if not amused by the concept. They took a show ideas that preschoolers can not watch and made them child friendly. I believe the show being in its 38th season a perfect example of how successful and popular it is to the public and educators.
Sesame Street Episodes:
Below is an analyze of Sesame Street. We have looked at four cognitive development skills the show expresses. We have provided examples of each skill from an episode. Also, we have included our overall thoughts on the shows performance and its educational purposes for the proposed age demographic.
Goal/intentions:
One main aspect of Sesame Street is being understand the goal of the character. Children must have an idea of what the person is trying to achieve. Studies have shown children as young as 12m can understand the end goal of an action.[1] An example of this being shown through Sesame Street is the episode called “Bye bye Birdie”. Baby Bear loses Ralphie the parrot. He has to look all over the street to try and find him. Children that have goal intentions must be able to identify that Ralphie has gone missing and the goal is to find him using cues like sounds and feathers to track him. Without the ability to do goal intentions the child would be confused by the entire episode and why they are trying to follow clues to find Ralphie.
Footnotes:
[1] Woodward, A.L. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal objects of an actor’s reach. Cognition, 69,1-34.
Animacy/ inanimacy:
The show uses a combination of humans and puppets to teach children. These puppets are given dynamic and featural cues so they are seen as appealing to children[1]. Elmo for example has a face that is configured like a human. He has a symmetrical face and even wears a smile. He has dynamic features like a human unlike his inanimate form. He swings his arms, he moves in a similar motion, and he has human like gestures. Studies show that children at 3 months old can tell human movement just from watching “point-light walker displays”[2]. Knowing this, children at a pre-school age can make this distinction of animate and inanimate based on movement. The creators of the show are successful in giving the puppets movements that are similar to humans. It also does not matter that the puppets feet are rarely if ever shown. The “point-light walked display” was manipulated and shown with an occlusion, meaning not all of the body and movements were visible to the viewers. Children at 9 months old could still make the distinction that the lights and movement they could see were animate human movements[3]. The show does a great job of taking into account all of the rules of animacy and applying them to their puppets to make them appear as lively as possible.
Footnotes:
[1]Dr. Warriner. “Conceptual 2” Lecture, Hamilton, March 10, 2015.
[2] Bertenthal, B.L, Proffitt, D. R., Spetner, N. B., & Thomas M. A(1985). The development of infant sensitivity to biomechanical motions. Child Development, 56, 531-543.
[3] Ibid.
Reading:
During the “Amazing Alphabet Race” episode we see how Sesame Street teaches reading skills. In this episode, children help Elmo find the letters of the alphabet in sequential order within other words around the street. An example of this task is the first letter “A” in the alphabet can be found in the world “Sesame”. Elmo has to find the rest of the alphabet under a time crunch. This task is more complex than it seems. This task involves children being able to read the words and understand what letters make up the words. To be able to complete this task children must have some letter awareness[1]. They have to be able to break up the words into their basic letters to find the letters of the alphabet. For example, if a child is looking for the letter “S” and sees the sign “Brussel sprouts for sale!” at a market they have to be able to realize the letter “s” appears five times within that sign. This is done by being able to read the words and break them up into their basic letters the alphabet. This is important because being able to break words into their separate letters leads to Phoneme awareness. Phoneme awareness is the smallest unit of sound in a word. An example is the word “bat” b” “a” “t” are all phonemes of the word just as the word “shovel” “sh” “o” “v” “el” are phonemes of the word[2]. Studies have shown being able to separate words into their separate letters leads to better phoneme awareness and spelling. This task is geared towards strengthening a child’s Phonological Awareness. Phonological Awareness is a child’s ability to detect and manipulate the component of sounds that compromise words[3]. This is exactly what children must do to complete this task. Children must be able to detect the different letters within a word to find the letters they need. It has been shown in studies that children who have practice earlier on in life with phonological awareness are 4-24 months more advances in their reading skills in comparison to children with no previous training. Sesame street is starting to prepare children early for reading skills by using techniques like phonological awareness and detection. An interesting fact to note is this show is geared towards preschoolers (2-4 years old). Most studies of phonological awareness are done on 4 year olds and older[4]. It would be interesting to see if children of 2-4 years old can understand this task of letter distinction.
Footnotes:
[1] Dr. Warriner. “Reading, Student Experiment Demo” Lecture, Hamilton, March 30, 2015.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read: A casual connection. Nature, 310, 419-421.
Final Thoughts:
Overall I found Sesame Street to be fairly educational. It was geared towards an appropriate age demographic because it encompassed the cognitive developmental skill children have at a preschool age. This includes language, goal intentions etc. I also enjoyed that the subject matter of the shows are diverse and current. The "Amazing Alphabet Race" "Game of Chairs" "House of Bricks" are all episodes that are based (fairly well if I might add) off popular and current television shows. This is not only appealing to the changing demographic of the show but to parents or caregivers. Usually the children will not be watching these shows by themselves and will be supervised by a parent or caregiver. These spoof episodes are great for an older demographic because the parents and caregivers will also be entertained if not amused by the concept. They took a show ideas that preschoolers can not watch and made them child friendly. I believe the show being in its 38th season a perfect example of how successful and popular it is to the public and educators.
Sesame Street Episodes:
References:
2015, April 8. Sesame Street Debut. Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sesame-street-debuts
Bertenthal, B.L, Proffitt, D. R., Spetner, N. B., & Thomas M. A(1985). The development of infant sensitivity to biomechanical motions. Child Development, 56, 531-543.
Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read: A casual connection. Nature, 310, 419-421.
Dr. Warriner. “Conceptual 2” Lecture, Hamilton, March 10, 2015.
Dr. Warriner. “Reading, Student Experiment Demo” Lecture, Hamilton, March 30, 2015.
Woodward, A.L. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal objects of an actor’s reach. Cognition, 69,1-34.
2015, April 8. Sesame Street Debut. Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sesame-street-debuts
Bertenthal, B.L, Proffitt, D. R., Spetner, N. B., & Thomas M. A(1985). The development of infant sensitivity to biomechanical motions. Child Development, 56, 531-543.
Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read: A casual connection. Nature, 310, 419-421.
Dr. Warriner. “Conceptual 2” Lecture, Hamilton, March 10, 2015.
Dr. Warriner. “Reading, Student Experiment Demo” Lecture, Hamilton, March 30, 2015.
Woodward, A.L. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal objects of an actor’s reach. Cognition, 69,1-34.