Jenny Deeble:
Foundation teachers have been telling me in the last few years how much richer the oral language program has become by using the play-based approach.
We have had a regular group of teachers who have all grown and work together to develop a really strong program. They share resources, they share ideas. They come together to discuss what's working, what is not working. And they feel as if they are getting a lot more experiences from the children and from their children when they express themselves through their written work and through their communication skills as well. And they are seeing some real improvements in that area.
I think a play-based approach, especially with our inquiry and they are transdisciplinary and it is not just working through ways to improve literacy skills, but we can incorporate a lot more of the STEM. Lots of numeracy talk comes out of that. We do math talks through those, getting children to use those experiences to develop their math concepts as well is really a powerful tool to use, the teachers are finding really successful.
Marie Apostolou:
I always think about what I am going to put out. For me today when I was working on the numeracy, we've been talking about tens frames and I actually had tens, tens trains, but I wanted to see who was going to make that connection, who was going to look at those ten trains and go, Oh, that looks like our ten frame. We can put our unit fix, we can match it with the cards, with the numbers that were there.
I got to sit around with that table and ask them questions. If you have three teddies in that ten frame, how many are left? Who can subitise? I have three teddies here, I have four teddies here. Can you tell me how many teddies are sitting in that ten train straight away? That is automatic assessment. I go, yes, we are subitising at the moment, they are learning how to do it. They are able to do it or they are not able to do it. How can I help them? Effective strategies for my classroom are about planning and having a reason for the things that you bring out for play based learning.
Really thinking about what it is you are teaching in your classroom. Some of the activities I bring out are, it is to support things that we have taught and I want children to consolidate that concept. Sometimes it is a new concept that we are learning. For example, pattern is something we are learning at the moment. This morning I had a few things out, and while they were playing and we are talking about different things, I was in the cafe, actually. I picked up an ice cream and there were some colours on top and I said does anyone see a pattern? And what is a pattern? I asked a few children. Then they were all jumping in and giving me answers. Now we were all playing, but at that same time I was assessing. I was able to see who can't, who is able to answer, who is able to tell me what a pattern is, who is able to show me? And you are not sure about what a pattern is, you actually cannot show me. Then one of the students got up. And even though she was not able to explain what a pattern is, she was able to show me what a pattern is.
Even though as a teacher you plan it, it is structured, but they get to choose what they want to do. For example, with the writing on the whiteboard, the sounds. Now, the two children actually that were doing the writing, I would have never thought that they would, that would be something that they would choose, that they would actually choose to sit with the whiteboard and do sounds when there was blocks out, there were other things that they could have done. That was their choice. They wanted to do it. Now at the moment, foundation students are very, very wary about writing. They are not sure, but putting the paper and pencil there, we actually had a little bit of a discussion about why would I put it? Why would I put paper and pencil out of the cafe? They came up with, oh, we could write a menu, Marie, or the chef could write a recipe. And even children that are not writing as such, they were doing little scribbles and they had their pictures and they knew exactly what their list was.
It is giving them that choice and that opportunity where, I do not know how to write yet, but I am still going to have a go at something that looks like a menu or a recipe. Having that choice there and different choices, they are still learning, but they have the choice to choose what they want to focus on.
Toby Marquette:
Seeing what they gravitate towards when we just put... especially the first few weeks, we are just putting different things out and then just seeing what they go to and then seeing whether we can make that better, different. Did they like that? Did they go near that? Sometimes they need a little bit of a push, though, generally go to things that are quite familiar for them, for instance, like Lego or things that they really enjoy. Sometimes you need to sort of prompt them a little bit to get out of their comfort zone a little bit. Yes, we have tried to do a bit of social engineering in that way by pairing them up with different people, asking that they go and meet with different people, therefore they have different interests. That has worked really well actually.
We try to have a mixture of both. Sometimes, open ended activities can become more explicit. We open up our doors and we are all together. We will go around and explain how you might use the different things. In some ways, it is open ended and explicit. The children can be explicit with what we have actually told them what to do, for those kids who maybe feel a little bit unsure about what to do or how to start something. And then we might stop them during a session to show the kids what other kids have been doing. Wow, look at this amazing thing that this child has done. It is open ended, but then it is explicit. You are showing them a way that they had not thought of before.
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