Marie Apostolou:
When communicating to parents about assessing play-based learning, we do it in different ways. One way is we have displays outside our classroom where they see photos of what their children are doing, but also after play-based learning or sometimes in between sometimes we stop play and we do a bit of a scribe. We have a look at our goal. What is our goal? What have we achieved so far? And I write down what children say so children will tell me what they are doing and I will put a name next to it so their parents know what they are getting out of it. But when parents see the pictures, they understand that it is not just playing. They actually understand that there's planning behind it. They understand there is a purpose to the play. It is not, we are just walking in and we are just playing. At the beginning of the year, some parents had the opportunity to see this and how it works. Also, during our information evening at the beginning of the year, we went through and we explained what play-based learning is all about, that there are goals, there are learning intentions.
It is not just free for all and see what happens. We have... Well, we haven't jumped on yet, but we're going to be using seesaw, which is something we used last year with our preps, and it's just sending photos out to parents so that they could see that their child is playing with someone different, their child is using vocab, their child is learning while they're playing what it is that they're playing. And we actually talk about the things that we do. And then when we have reflection time with the children, we actually say to the children, what did you learn? What did you learn at the, you know, today during play-based learning? What did you learn when you were playing so and so? What did you learn when you were working in that area? When you have children, when they talk about all the things that they have learned, they then take that home. We have some children that are writers, like I have a little boy in my class this year who is just beginning to sound out words. So today when he actually was talking to a group about apple seeds being poisonous, and I said, well, that is really interesting.
And I said, well, maybe you can write it in our reflective diary, which is a big diary that we have at the front that we, I usually scribe for them and he was happy and he went and wrote on there. So he wrote the statement and that is a big learning diary that we are using in the classroom. And kids as we go along, the students will be will have that opportunity. They draw pictures and they stick it on. And then I scribe, what did we learn? What did we get out of today's play-based learning activities? You know, what did you learn when you went to the maths table? What did you learn on the table that had, you know, all the food there, etcetera, etcetera? So then when parents come in, they actually get to say that. When we have seesaw, we will be posting up photos and what children say. They cannot come back and think, oh, my child's not learning. Because they are.
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Updated