Panel Members
Facilitator: Professor Andrea Nolan
Research context:Professor Louise Paatsch
Emeritus Professor Karen Stagnitti
Principal, Mount Dandenong Primary School: Sally Alderton
Foundation teacher, Mount Dandenong Primary School: Kelly Watson
Andrea Nolan (Andrea) Welcome everyone to webinar 3 Assessing learning through play.
My name is Andrea Nolan and I'm a Professor of Education at Deakin University and I'll be the facilitator for this webinar.
I'd like to start by the acknowledgement of country. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, Australia's First Peoples and pay my respects to their histories, connections to the land and waterways and continuous living cultures.
The... Today's webinar has a panel of experts and what I'd like to do is to go around and let each of the panel members introduce themselves.
So I'll just call out some names here and let those people say hello to you. We'll start with Louise.
Louise Paatsch (Louise) Hi everybody welcome to this evening. I'm Louise Paatsch, I'm a Professor of Education at Deakin University and my area of research is in spoken language and I work alongside both Andrea and Karen where we look at the interaction between oral language and play abilities. So we'll talk more about that as we go through this evening.
Andrea Thank you Louise. We'll throw to Karen please.
Karen Stagnitti (Karen) Good evening everyone and thank you Andrea. So I'm Karen Stagnitti, I'm Emeritus Professor at Deakin University retired now, was in the School of Health and Social Development and I've been working for over 40 years with children who have issues with learning or disability and I've been working for the last decade or so with Louise and Andrea looking at play in schools.
Andrea Thank you Karen and Kelly we'll throw to you.
Kelly Watson (Kelly) Hi everyone. My name is Kelly Watson, I'm the foundation teacher at Mount Dandenong Primary School. My background is...I was teaching Primary for a long time before I went into early childhood and now I've moved back this past year into the foundation classroom bringing with me my early childhood knowledge as well.
Andrea Thank you Kelly.
Now we also have Sally Alderton with us, who I believe is experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment. So I think Sally's going to disappear and try to re-enter the webinar space. But in her absence let me introduce her. So as I said it's Sally Alderton and she is the Principal of Mount Dandenong Primary School. So we hope Sally can connect back in very shortly.
So now you've met the panel. Now it's time for me to tell you a little bit about how this hour together will work.
We're really going to be looking at two aspects. The first aspect is assessing the curriculum itself, and the other one is about assessing the play and children's play abilities. And if you've already engaged with the content in Module 3 you'll see how important it is to understand each child as a player, not only assessing the curriculum content.
We're going to go through those two aspects and then at the very end we're going to address some of the questions that have been that have been coming through on the online discussion boards.
So thank you we really welcome those and after the webinar we really welcome you to keep going on that padlet, that online discussion board and we will certainly answer your questions and respond to your comments. So that's just a part that we can keep connected to each other.
I'm going to throw to Kelly and Kelly you might like to tell us a little bit about what you're doing at Mount Dandenong Primary School and what got you there? So I was going to ask Sally to talk about this from a Principal perspective but let's hear it from a foundation teacher.
Kelly So do you want me to mainly talk about where I'm going with assessment or give the background to where I've...?
Andrea I think, I think start us off with a little bit of background because it was really your Principal that was the catalyst to...
Kelly Yes, Yes. ...
Andrea see the value of play and bringing that into the foundation classroom.
Kelly Yeah. Well I'm happy to talk to what Sally was discussing the other day and what, what she's fed......information she's given to me.
I think she felt that the school itself-she's been here about two years, two and a half years, had... that there was such a big gap and her and I have discussed this as well. In terms of the change from early childhood to the Primary classroom. And, and I know that she was feeling that there was a big divide between the two and she really wanted to try and bridge that gap between the approach of the early childhood educators and the foundation and even the one/twos as well at the school. So I think when I came on board this year I think it appealed to her that I had had that background experience and had been on both sides of the education. And I said that I could help bridge that gap at their school here at Mount Dandenong and the children have really embraced it. And the school staff have been really supportive of the program that I've been implementing here.
Andrea Thanks Kelly. So now you might like to talk about what does that mean for you as a foundation teacher? And now really about assessing student learning particularly in those sort of curriculum areas. How do you go about it? This is something that often teachers are a little bit nervous about when they move into a play-based and inquiry learning approach. It's about how do you assess and what is authentic assessment particularly around the curriculum areas. So if you could tell us about how you go about it that would be fabulous.
Kelly Sure well for me it's really been a work in progress that I'm still learning as I go and working out what works for me. I've certainly had to re-evaluate how I assess now compared to how I did when I was teaching when I first started out in the Primary classroom. And my experience in early childhood has certainly helped me to manage new ways to assess in real-time. Things like anecdotal notes of student progress. I've put together just this term some checklists connected to curriculum like specifically related to curriculum that I've used during play-based sessions with the students to assess how they're going. I'm certainly more involved in ongoing learning than I was before when I was teaching in the past rather than the end of a unit, traditionally sitting down assessing in that respect. I'm able to see things in real time through play-based learning. And I'm also able to connect the learning that's happening in the classroom to real life experiences outside the classroom. For example, we had a cafe going for a little while in our room. And the students were using the terminology of finances and things like that and I was able to talk to them about "where have you seen this in your families use this sort of knowledge outside the classroom?" So really being able to connect that learning at school to real-life experiences outside.
When I'm doing my planning for play-based investigation and play-based learning experiences, I always have the curriculum there with me and I plan specific to the curriculum goals that I have for the students and I make this really visible to the children in my class as well. I sit there and I specifically say as I've set up things or they've been a part of the setup "What are we learning here? What are we doing here? How do we know we've learnt something? How can we show that we've learnt something?" Not only for the students to understand that themselves, but I hope then that would be filtered back into families as well, so they can see the value of the play. I'm really working on...
There was a high priority for me in early childhood to make that learning really visible to families and I feel like that's still a bit of a work in progress for me now. I show it through newsletters, I have informal chats to families [excuse me] and I have displays up.
But I want to start doing some more things that I did in the past, like perhaps a reflection book to really show that learning. But for me at this stage it's really about making...help making sure that the students understand what they're learning and what they're still working on based on these activities that we do with play-based learning.
The program that I've been running with the play-based learning has helped me really get to know my students better. Stories about home and things that are happening in their lives that can affect their learning and their ability to learn have really come out during those one-on-one times that I've spent with them. I've helped... it's helped me incorporate interests which then breeds engagement and interest in the program.
And I've also been able to notice gaps that I might not have noticed otherwise. Like for example when we're doing play-based activity the other day, I noticed when a child was counting, a child that I thought was particularly good at maths and demonstrated in her work that she understood addition and subtraction concepts. I noticed that she counted up to five with her fingers before adding on the additional numbers. So had I not been in that real time play-based experience with her I might not have seen that, and I was able to help her then and there in the moment with the learning to progress.
Also whilst on numeracy it's also been...able to be... I've been able to see connections with student knowledge. So for example the 2D and 3D shape activity tower building that I did as part of the module for this project, I was really trying to look at the connection that children have between the 2D shapes and the 3D shapes can they recognize one and the other? Can they build? Can they draw them? And I was able to write notes and checklists and, and really assess that in real time. Also things like open-ended balance scales. I was able to see that some students were holding things in their hands to really work out before they tested their theories. Same with the cafe in the school area that we've had set up here. When they're taking on the role as the teacher, I could see that I can assess and see that some students when they're doing the writing weren't forming the letters correctly or had some misunderstandings about beginning and end sounds that I might not have been able to see otherwise.
But I'm not gonna lie as...recording assessment during play-based learning is challenging. Particularly if you've modelled yourself as a player as well. So if you're playing with, if I'm playing with the students with their learning and being a real part of it and then I suddenly sit there with my checklist or my notes. I see them...They want to be a part of what I'm doing. So I've really had to verbalise to them that "Ok I really need...you guys can keep doing, I'm just writing some notes and then at the end we'll all come together and I'll be able to...We can share, I can share this great learning that you guys are doing, so keep doing what you're doing." Because that end part where we all come together is, is really meaningful important for me to show that learning. And that's been a little bit of a way to help them to continue on with what they're doing without my assessment interrupting their play.
Andrea Thank you Kelly. And what I really value is your honesty of saying it's still a work in progress and it's tricky and you're still reflecting on, on the process and refining and which is fantastic. And you'll all be able to see Kelly in action in Module 4 .You'll be able to see Kelly and some of those activities that she was... experiences that she was just mentioning.
Now I believe we have Sally back. So Sally we're going..... the wonders of technology hey. So I think what I'll ask you to do ….Kelly has actually given a brief overview of why Mount Dandenong Primary School has actually decided to implement play-based but let's hear it from you as the Principal.
Sally Alderton (Sally) Okay. And I must apologize for that before. I think my computer decided to die right at the moment the webinar started. So firstly, I'd just like to say that the journey was sparked on by Covid last year and the fact that so many of our students we knew would be coming to us with less play-based experiences than they had had previously in previous cohorts.
However it was something that I, I have been really keen to get started at school for a number of years. Having seen...students really struggle when they've come into foundation in terms of their motivation often takes a bit of a dive when they're faced with more formal learning. Even anxiety, school refusal and behavioural problems, have become quite evident over the years when I've seen what a stark difference there's been from an early childhood environment through to a school based environment. So I really wanted to create a program that bridged that gap well and gently transition students to more formal learning opportunities. We do obviously still teach explicitly and we have an explicit teaching block in the morning. But those play-based experiences that we are offering to the students I found have been really motivational and have really enabled our students to settle really well and this year we haven't seen any of the behavioural problems or the anxiety issues that I've seen in previous cohorts.
But I will say that the motivation also has come from looking at the research and knowing that students in play-based environments in early education do, do really well and just wanting to be able to provide those kind of opportunities for our learners. Thank you.
Andrea: Thank you Sally. So nice to hear those words from you. Fabulous.
Let's move on and I'm going to invite Louise now to provide just a very brief overview Louise, of the benefits of assessing through play-based and inquiry learning and perhaps unpack an example of how this could be done in relation to maybe the language and literacy curriculum.
Louise Thanks Andrea. So there are many benefits of course of having a play-based and inquiry approach. And perhaps one of the biggest things that you will be able to notice if you're either implementing now or about to is when children engage with the imaginative and dramatic play for example. And what that is, is setting up opportunities for young students to be able to develop what we will call here story. And so one of the biggest connections from play to language is around that story or what we call narrative. So what's a narrative? We all know that a narrative's all about setting up characters setting up a setting, it's followed by a whole lot of logical sequences of action that tell the story. And then there's the interaction between characters. And there's also there's often a problem or several problems. And all of those needs res...need resolution. All of this we can observe when children are in play. How in
fact does the child set up the play equipment? How does the child setup the characters? How are they inter relating between each other? How long does this story go for? How many sequences to the story? And how are they interconnected? And then is there a problem in the story and how does that young student actually resolve it? So we can see that in just a couple of episodes their play. And we can see it on an individual level.
But then it goes beyond that because as you know there are more than one child who's usually interacting in the play.
So what are we seeing then that expands beyond just that literacy and language of course of narrative? Well we can see the children who are able to use language what we call pragmatic language that social use of language. And that involves, how does a student take turns? What is the routine that they use to take turns? Is it something that they ask a question? Is it that they make a comment? Is it that they actually just physically come into the space and start taking a turn?
We also see that there are opportunities to negotiate with their friends. Because one child for example may come into the play thinking that this block here is going to be a character in the play. But when they come up and start to interact with their peer they can often find that that other peer doesn't actually want that character to be that particular thing, they'd actually prefer that block to be a truck. So how does that then we can look at these other higher cognitive skills such as self-regulation social, emotional development. How do they negotiate? How do they take risks? So all of these are all skills and abilities that we can assess during the play.
Another which is of course related to the pragmatic language but it's also related to narrative. Is can that child take the perspective of another person? So can they be saying - Well I know that that my friend here wants that block to be a truck. And I can actually think about that and think well how can I then embed that into my story? And all of this of course is related to theory of mind. It's related to the play and these higher important cognitive skills.
Language is also apparent in many of the ways that they listen. So in our speaking and listening how do the children listen? How do they remember? How do they follow instructions from their peers and of course from the teacher or the adult that's in there? How do they answer the questions? And how do they just participate generally in these informal situations? So there's some examples of the way play-based and inquiry are really important aspects to children's learning particularly in language and literacy.
Andrea Thank you Louise. Want to move it on a little bit and start thinking about the capabilities now.
So in webinar 2 one of the teachers there was working in an IB school and talked a lot about how the play, through the play she was able to assess the thinking skills, communication skills, research skills, self-management skills and social skills. So I'm thinking perhaps we can start thinking about how this translates to the Victorian curriculum about the capabilities the critical and creative thinking, the ethical, the intercultural and the personal and social. And so Kelly how, how do you go about that? Can, can you see play as a vehicle to be able to assess those capabilities?
Kelly Yeah absolutely. I think in fact it's through the play-based approach that it's easier to assess than it is in your traditional approach. For example, we were doing a boat building activity the other day, it was really open-ended and when the children were working on it I was able to get them to clarify their thinking. I could see who was helping other students who, who was bothered by the fact that somebody next to them was doing the same thing as them and I was able to say "that doesn't mean... they're not copying you, they're trying they're learning from you and it's great that that's happening." Really scaffolding that ability for peer teaching. I've also found that through that sort of experience and particularly with the boat one that I'm talking about, I was able to track their creative thinking and over time and their problem-solving over time. So we were able to do the activity where they built it one day and they tested it out the next day and then they could rebuild again and they learnt from what others had done so in another environment. Whereas with me very much guiding the classroom those learning experiences necessarily might not have happened and I certainly wouldn't have been able to assess it in the way that I had.
Something else that I've noticed with the play-based approach is children that I, I just noticed Louise when she's talking about language. There's a few in my class that yes, struggle with language and I noticed through doing the play-based approach one of the children that is typically struggling to get through things and everything's a little bit hard for him. He was building with the Lego towers and his self-esteem was just built up by somebody else looking at his Lego towers because he's quite good at them. And through doing that play-based way with a Lego and with the block building he was able to feel a sense of self-esteem and like it was something that he was really good at and that he could show others in a way that didn't require him using language.
The ethical capabilities...Again that's hard to assess without a play-based approach. Short of running around outside in the play area to see how students react to situations where they have to assess right and wrong and outcomes of acts. Through doing play-based learning where the children are role-playing as we were discussing before, I can see how they're interacting with one another, who needs help, who needs support and under...understanding things like diversity and individuality, accepting difference and I can support this growth in them.
And then it also provides me a way to give that feedback and assessment back to families. I've had many times where families have come up to me in the past and said "Oh who are they playing with? How are they with their friends?" And apart from the small group work inside and you know what snapshots I see in the yard that can be hard to assess. Whereas through play-based approaches I've been able to really get a much clearer idea to feed back to families regarding their skills in those ethical capabilities and we can have real-time discussions about how we treat each other.
And in reflecting yesterday about this too, you know if something happens in the yard and they come in after play and they discuss with me what's happened. I think sometimes there's a feeling of they're in trouble and it's daunting to have this discussion with me even if it's just one-on-one after. Whereas if I catch things happening in real time, I think there's less feeling of 'Oh I'm in trouble and the teachers pulling me aside and something has happened after'...
Through play-based I can really catch them in the moment and support them in their learning, in those personal and social capability areas. And I can see things like problem-solving that I might not have been able to otherwise, otherwise see so...that's where I'm at with that at the moment.
Andrea Thank you Kelly.
Louise Andrea can I just add to Kelly there, just around the language that's used in that as well. What Kelly's highlighting beautifully there, is around the importance of developing that emotive language of how children feel beyond that you know happy/sad. Because they actually start to use that in the language of the characters and when they're describing that as well. So there's so many opportunities in in what you just said there too Kelly.
Andrea Thank you Kelly and great point Louise.
Sally I'm just wondering what you're noticing about what's happening in the foundation area around assessing learning through play.
Sally Yes. Well, what I've really noticed is the relationships that Kelly has formed with the students have been really strong and very authentic from very early on. She knows the students really, really well and I think that's largely contributed to the play-based approach. And obviously when we do know our students really well that's, that's how we can really use authentic assessment properly as an educator.
So Kelly uses her observational skills and takes anecdotal notes, she also uses checklists that she's developed herself that are based on the curriculum standards as well as her learning intentions and objectives. And using that experience that she has from early childhood as well as her, her understanding of child development. She's able to really merge what she sees with that knowledge and experience that she has to get a really clear picture of the learner and what progress that learner is currently making within the play.
So I think what's been really powerful through this approach is that, that desire to really privilege the teacher as a professional has really come through really clearly in this. And I think that's really inspiring for teachers. It's giving them some of that power back and saying I trust your observations and your judgments of these students and what you're seeing in that learning. And it's privileging that as assessment because I think that there has perhaps been a trend to... not to discard that knowledge but to not place as much faith in that kind of teacher observational data over the last 10 years as we should. Because it is an opportunity in the play-based learning for the educator to really observe what the student can do in an authentic situation.
And I think the play-based experiences that Kelly has setup have really been authentic for the students. And that's largely because she's based them on their interests but she's also managed to bring that back to what they do need to learn in prep. And as a result she can see how they can actually apply their knowledge and their skills in those interactions and really get a good picture of what their learning is as well as where they need to go to next.
And then that data that she's collecting through her observation can be triangulated with more formal assessments. So that's what we have been doing. So Kelly will still take phonics based assessments on the student's knowledge of letters and letter sounds for example we still obviously do the English online interview. We've done the maths online interview and all of that data can form a much broader and I think more clearer picture of the learner and where they are with their learning.
The formative assessment that goes on in the daily practice in the play-based approach is really, really powerful. And we know that it's that formative assessment that does move learners forward. So Kelly's able to question the students. And through that questioning she's working out what they know. And then she's able to use that information to plan her next teaching experience.
And I think it is important to understand that the play is guided and structured so that the learning opportunities are quite clear there for the students. They have choice in what they're going to and they have in-put into what play-based experiences are, but they are still quite teacher guided. And that, that's allowing Kelly to ensure that she's still meeting the curriculum objectives assessing and then re-framing the next learning experience based on that.
I think I've also observed that those conversations between students that Kelly mentioned previously, opportunities for the students to explain their thinking to one another. I've seen those and they are very powerful because those opportunities allow the students to actually to, to think about what they want to say and plan, plan that in their conversations but also to, to improve those language skills while they're engaging in those conversations and then learn from each other in those interactions. And those opportunities for peer learning are really strong in the classroom.
And I think that they, they also provide opportunities for Kelly to assess as she's been talking about the capabilities. Because those as we know those social and interpersonal skills that students develop in that foundation, foundational year are really crucial. And that's a really great environment to be able to assess how they're going with those as well as obviously with critical and creative thinking, ethical thinking and the intercultural capability too so those skills and learning dispositions really lend themselves well to that kind of instruction. And therefore assessment of those skills makes sense in that context. Thank you.
Andrea Thank you Sally what a rich response that was really given everyone a lot to think about. And I really loved the... your affirming statement about teachers as professionals in, in this space and that they're making the judgments and, and rightly so from the evidence which may look a little bit different in a play-based and inquiry learning approach. So thank you both Kelly and Sally lots, lots for people to think about there.
I did say at the beginning that it's almost like two different aspects we're going to look at but they do actually come together.
And So we're going to move on now to talking about play abilities and why it is so important to know children as players and to understand their play ability and how that links to learning. So I'm going to handover to Louise to talk about the research that she has been doing with Karen that highlights how language development is facilitated by strong play skills. So over to you Louise.
Louise Thanks Andrea. And this is a project that, a research project that both, well three people here, Karen and myself and Andrea as well, that we did. And we were approached by a particular school and this school both the Principal and the leading teachers and the Assistant Principal came to us saying that they are noticing that the students in their school were coming into the foundation year with what they called much lower levels of language than they had noticed before. They'd also noticed that their social skills and they had limited general knowledge and so they wanted to try, then they thought they needed to be a change. And the way that they did that was to implement a what they called a developmental play program what we're calling here as, as a play-based approach.
And so it was important for us then to work with the teachers and a rich … initially we had the foundation teachers and the lead teachers. We worked with them and picking up on some of the things that both Sally and Kelly had said, it was about their ownership, it was about their agency, it was about their own professionalism, it was about their learning journey in understanding what play is and in understanding what the learning and the value of play around other aspects of learning.
So we use what we call an inquiry process where we work to support teachers. We met with the teachers throughout two years. We did a lot of resource sharing. We did a lot of problem-solving... did the...the teachers did some classroom observations of each other. They certainly took video of themselves and students in play so that they could look at assessing the play itself but also assessing the other learning that was going on and to align that with the curriculum. They took photographs of their practice.
And we also did some language assessments and some play assessments and both of those were very formal and we worked as we said with foundation first and then watched the same group of children enter into year 1 and then we started to work with the year 2 teachers as well.
So what did we find at the very beginning? At the very beginning, we found that about a third of the children at the start of term one with 72 children about a third of them had low, what we call below average language skills and we also noticed that the same group of children also had what we would say no play ability as measured by formal play assessment. We also looked at their narrative skills and this group of children it was over half, it was about 63% of them actually had a lower score than what would be typically developed at that time of the year for that age group.
And so as we said we then worked with the teachers to put a play-based...We started looking at what the play skills you know how a child would develop story, how they would sequence their play actions. Was the child able to substitute an object for something else? And if so could they use that same object several times and talk about what it was and its function? We looked at how they...and supported the teachers to look at children's figurine or doll play. So in other words how they took on a character and, and what the, the ability of that character. So again, we take the perspective of the character. We use the character in play. We, we change the character across the scenes and the character then ends up with their own life and in the whole story. And then of course we looked at their play, their role-play as well.
So this all took well and truly over a year. But then we reassessed them again both in their play and their narrative and their language and the improvement was significant. We saw that by the end of the year only about 7% were below and that we had a huge proportion of children who moved into the average and in fact what we did see was rather a large group as well who improved what we would say two standard deviations above the norms.
So in that way we could certainly say that the play program that they had implemented certainly impacted on the children's language levels, on their narrative abilities and also on their play.
So we went then and looked further into well, what do you think, what aspect of language was improved and what aspects of play supported that? And the paper and the research that we've just done, that Karen's led that paper has shown us in the data that in fact when a child is able to substitute an object. So again, they can use a pen for an aeroplane, they can use a block for a car, when they can do that and when they can do it at a very high level where they use the object for anything and they can talk about what they made and the main function of that object, it actually predicts the children's language. So this was another way that we were seeing the value of play and the value of that in supporting language development as well.
So that was one of our projects and we're still looking at some of that data now.
But it's a really good indicator of working with teachers understanding their own practices and again, this was all about getting them to reflect, getting them to watch each other, getting them to implement the play-based approach over a year and to know that often you don't see change in the first couple of months and that you do see change by the time that the children get to the end of the year. So again, it was fabulous and they... We saw teachers go from "I'm not sure about this... to this is the best thing ever" and you've already heard Kelly spoke about you know the value of play and the results that you start to see throughout this play-based approach. And I'll stop there.
Andrea Thank you Louise. So now that's really sort of paved a lovely way for Karen to take over now and talk a little bit about all the extensive research that you've done Karen, about the importance of play and how best to assess students play ability. So over to you.
Karen Thanks Andrea and it's been really interesting listening to everyone talk. I think really early on about 20 years ago one of the first pieces of research I did was look at 42 children where the preschool teacher and parents were concerned about a child coping at school, they didn't have any diagnosis, compared to a group of children where no one had concerns. And when you looked at the children's play the big difference was the children where people were concerned about them coping at school, they had real difficulties with sequencing their play actions, like organizing their play. And as Louise has talked about using those symbols in play, like using a box as a car or a block as a car or a pen as a plane, they really had difficulties with those aspects of their play ability. And reflecting on that study that so long ago I've just...in the work I've done with Andrea and Louise since, it's just we've just confirmed that these early observations really are core skills.
The imaginative play that pretend play, and I think Kelly's talked about this, you can see children's thinking as children play. It, it really lets you know how they're thinking and how they're organizing their thoughts. Children who flit around and don't stay very long at one place. You know they, they don't have...When you look at their play...They don't have the capacity to sit and think and sequence and organize their play which results in a narrative. So the link between those play skills and narrative it's really quite strong. I've also found that the ability to use symbols in play, if you look at that in preschool children four years later when they're 8 and 9 it's still influential in children's oral language and children's ability to use narrative language.
The other aspect those... particularly using symbols in play, comes up in a lot of research around social competence. And I know Kelly and Sally have all talked about children being emotionally and socially ready to learn, children being motivated, children being less anxious. And, and we know in play children relax, children should feel safer in play. And we know when children engage in play all those lovely hormones in the brain start flowing through the opioids and dopamine. So they're socially ready to learn. They're more open to learning. They're more relaxed. They're more in a position where they're, they're noticing things and playing besides others.
So we have found that the other aspects of looking at children's play and understanding it are things like… What stories are they playing? So children start with you know very early they'll, they'll be doing things like drinking and pretending to go to sleep because that's what they do daily in daily life and by the time they're going to school they can make up anything or they should be able to make up anything. And even if they're copying movies and taking ideas out of their favourite stories a child who is really competent at play will create their own story within that, they'll take bits and pieces but they'll still create their own story. And Louise talked about you know the doll or the teddy or the character becoming alive in the play and the child has to impose their own thoughts and feelings, so they've got to take a perspective of another. And also when they're a role themselves in the play and it helps with that social understanding of the world that they're living in. The overriding ability to play is for a child to be able to think of those ideas and self initiate.
And both Kelly and Sally talked about that guided play. So you're, you're guiding the play but you're still allowing that child to make decisions within that play so you can really see what they're thinking and how they're going about that.
In in a lot of the research I found certain styles of play. So the narrative players are the children that create stories, they take on roles you know the doll, teddy or character is doing something fantastic and you get the problems that children embed in the play themselves and then they solve. But there's also a group of children who are mathematical players and these children are really interested in how objects relate together. So for example, this would be the child in the sandpit who wants to know how you get water to run from one end to the other. They're not interested in creating a big scene, but they're interested in how things are working. And these children are fascinating to watch in their play. It gives you a really … insight into what hooks them into learning what really interests them and how to build that skill that they have, that natural curiosity that they have and to expand on that. So I'll hand back to you Andrea?
Andrea Thank you Karen. Some great insights there about what Karen has found from the research. We do have a question Louise, that's come through the chat about the study you were speaking about and wondering whether many of those children had attended kindergarten?
Louise Thanks Andrea. Not all had but the majority had, yes. There were some ESL but not predominantly. It was in a low SES area. Yeah. So Karen or Andrea if you want to add to that given you were on the project as well?
Karen Yes. I know we looked at that. I think what you said is correct that some had, but a lot of the children hadn't.
Andrea Terrific. All right. So we're coming to the final ten minutes or so and I did promise that we would address some of the discussion that's been happening on the online discussion board.
So it's really just some insights from me about that and then there's two questions that I would like to raise and invite the panel to respond to.
So what we're really seeing from the discussion board is that teachers are starting to make the connections between what is occurring in play and the curriculum areas for example, numeracy literacy and as we were all talking about before the personal and social capability, but in one, one session. So you're starting to see like you might have an intention of looking at perhaps numeracy, but you can actually see those other aspects of the curriculum woven in. So it sort of has a richness and a depth to it that you would not get if you were just concentrating on a numeracy experience etc. So it was great to see that, that's coming through.
Like the idea of using a play-based journal to set goals which can be sourced from the curriculum. So again it's great.
Please add your ideas into this discussion board because it's a rich resource for everybody then.
And fabulous to see people starting to use terms such as object substitution and commenting on the video clip of the four foundation students in action and actually practicing analyzing the play and now you know why. Because play ability is really a predictor of a child as a learner.
So there were two questions that come through and I'll just ask the first one and then let... and let the panel decide who would like to answer. So I'll just get this one up.
"I find it difficult to create diversity in tasks and getting students excited about playing with explicit mathematics tasks and literacy tasks. I find most students go to building blocks, puzzles and the home corner rather than a letter recognition or shape attribute blocks tasks. How can I get students excited about going to mathematics tasks and literacy tasks?" And Kelly as the practicing teacher here we might throw to you?
Kelly Ok well oh it says I'm still muted. I think I'm... am I not muted? Ok well I get that concern as well. And I think once you build that relationship with the students. I found although sometimes they kinda gravitate to where I am so if I'm really wanting them to do something that's particularly related to numeracy, sometimes getting them over with me and making it seem really fun and, and starting a game even a dominoes game, supercharging those numbers and getting them working out who can recognize that, that is five and, and connecting them up and making it as fun as possible.
Even like the school area if I could turn my computer around you would see, that the term is used very loosely, like it's a whiteboard that was out as my classroom whiteboard and some textas and it was where the library corner is and I accidentally stuck, well I didn't accidentally, I stuck up a hundreds chart there purely based on wanting to block something else off and the students just flocked to it. And, and without me having to do too much intervention, in fact very little. I just they just have been role modelling and playing what we do in our classroom when I'm doing explicit teaching. And then they just know where the resources are in the room. For example, I do a lot with little whiteboards so whoever was playing the role of the teacher then instructed the students to go and get the whiteboards and so they all just did that and because there was a group of them and they were so excited about it, the others just flocked that way as well.
So I think it's, it's hard and it's a ...crowded curriculum and everyone's tired and you've got...I've got children of my own...But I think if you show the enthusiasm and you start an activity and you sound excited about it and you run through … take the time at the start of the lesson to be like "ok over here we can do this. What else could we do here?" And really brainstorm some ideas for learning that could happen there. Then I think the students get, well I've seen the student get inspired to take part in activities that they might not otherwise have been drawn too.
Andrea Thank you Kelly. And you really touched on the second question which has come through which is:
"What I struggle to do is find time in the classroom to provide opportunities for things like play scripts to develop. Any suggestions to support this would be appreciated."
I mean time is always an issue in everything we do working with children in classrooms. So Kelly how do you find time so that play can develop? Because we know play does take time to develop to become richer, more complex. So having a five-minute block of play is not going to really cut it for children's learning. So Kelly what do you do about that?
Kelly Well I do set, I do play-based activities throughout my entire program. So it might be a five-minute thing at the start of a lesson like a shape game or a whole class movement and
music activity. Thinking about, like for numbers and doing songs to get them moving, get them enthused about the task.
And then we'll do some explicit, I'll do some explicit teaching some small group work. I might have your traditional stations setup, then the next session after I've kind of role modelled those activities and they know what learning is happening and they know and I know where they are. Then I'll have blocks of longer time where the children can make their own choices in play. And sometimes I even at the end of the session get those students to come up and talk about what they were doing in the home corner or with the maths shape game that they were playing and really teach the others. And then I've seen the next day, that kind of draws different students to the activity that might not have been there prior to that before because they sort of thought it wasn't their thing or they weren't interested. But if they see their peers being engaged that can be a big inspiration for them to do it.
But I definitely think it needs to be, not just done Thursday afternoon okay it's play-based time, you really need to...needs to happen throughout the program combined with the explicit teaching and then allow there, to be open-ended sessions where they can really apply that learning.
And that's when I found it's been really great to work on my assessment approaches too.
Andrea Thank you Kelly. I'm sure that's given some teachers some inspiration and some things to, things to try and have a try and create space for this important approach.
So coming through the live chat we've had one particular teacher Kerry, has commented:
'that this year she's really noticed that children are struggling with their fine motor and gross motor skills possibly due to sort of the preschool experience that they have, or it's been so interrupted for them.'
And just making the comment that 'she used a lot of messy play and tray activities and the students have really thrived and the assessment has shown a significant increase and' …. Kerry attributes it directly to play and feels that there was no other way to really be able to, to move those children on in that particular area.
We do have another question that's come in and Karen I don't know if you would like to answer this but do you find screen time is affecting the recent cohorts in foundation?
Karen So that's me. I well, talking to lots of other teachers and therapists and Louise I know you've done research on screen, a lot of screen does impact. So it impacts we found in a group of children whose parents were very educated and knowledgeable just the amount of time children were on screen it did impact on their fine motor abilities. But playing, playing helps. Playing with objects and manipulating objects lessened the impact.
The other thing about screen and Louise can talk about this is, is the interaction that occurs around screen. If a child's just left on a screen with no interaction, we know that they're not getting the full value of what you get when you're interacting with people and you're engaging emotionally and socially with people.
So it's... all children go on screen I know that, but if you've got a lot of time on a screen on your own, that's when I've noticed teachers really start to comment on social, emotional aspects of children and also language. So maybe Louise you could talk a bit about the language impact.
Louise Just to add to that is if we think about these, the purpose of the screen time and I think with Covid we're seeing a lot of this the zooming talking with parents or grandparents or relatives because they can't see people face-to-face. So it's setting up those opportunities which were very important, versus leaving students or children to their own device and there is no talk.
So if you think about it from say a print picture book, what you see if you leave just a book with the child and there's no dialogue and there's no talk around that book then, they're not going to get as much and that child isn't perhaps being extended on their higher-order thinking there and their predictive... all the things that you know as educators that you do with picture storybooks.
It's the same, if we see that the, the digital is a tool we have to start flipping that same order, the affordances of these in their play. We can be putting them in they can also be doing objects substitution for a you know, a phone whether it's a computer whether it is a screen but it's not the actual thing.
So again it's, it's around the, the talk, the interaction both from peer-to-peer as well as adult to child that we've got to start to promote, to engage children in conversation interaction where they've got the ability to still look at a screen but also have the face-to-face, the visual, the non- verbal. How you take a turn in a nonverbal way such as you know, flicking the eyes away, coming back, a rising, a pause, all those things children need to have the opportunity to be able to read and also use in their own communication.
So there are affordances that it's, it's about what you do with the things, that is really important and how you use them.
Andrea Thank you Louise. And that really brings us to the end of the webinar. So I thank everybody for your participation. Thank you very much panel members. So Louise, Kelly, Sally and Karen for the generosity of your expertise, I'm sure it was well received by our listeners. Thank you everyone and goodbye.
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