Year 4 & Beyond Play Based Learning
Firstly if you have the opportunity to attend any of these courses facilitated by Longworth Education - GO!
Our focus for our teaching spiral of Inquiry this year is to raise student engagement and academic outcomes for BOYS at NPS. In order for our academic outcomes for boys to improve, we need to engage our boys so that they do not realise they are learning. Moana Iti and Nui had previously been to a Play Based learning course and had made radical changes to their learning programmes. To be honest I was sceptical about what this would look like for us - weren't we supposed to be getting them ready for learning in the senior school? We had made changes to our learning but this would be challenging and require us to look deeply at what we are doing and why. We are doing things well but we can do better.
At the beginning of the day Year 4 & Beyond Play Based Learning, placing my dot on where I felt I sat was confronting and provoking - we talk about student agency but is that what is really happening in our learning environment? I placed myself between Level 5 and Level 6. See below the criteria.
(Course notes - Longworth Education, 2018)
The ideal being the below criteria
(Course notes - Longworth Education, 2018)
I am dipping into both but at the back of my mind is the idea that we have to DO reading, writing and maths in a structured way - I don’t really know any other way. I can read everything under the sun about student inquiry, building curiosity, leadership styles, how best children learn, etc., but really letting go and trusting the learners to still learn is a tough ask when you know you have to present assessment data to show achievement. How do I navigate the gradual release of responsibility?
So what do I need to do to move onto the next stage?
- Have a deeper understanding of the what the Pre-Operational Cognitive Stage through to the Concrete Operational Cognitive Stage is and where our learners sit within this continuum. Is this learner developmentally ready for what I am trying to do?
- Be aware of the expectations - cognitively socially, and emotionally, and how these impact learning experiences.
- Understand the functional types of play - physical, language, exploratory, constructive, fantasy and social play (From ‘Free to Learn’, Peter Gray, 2013) and how to respond and include these within our programme.
- Know the NZ Curriculum inside and out, make links to what the learners are doing in their play and the AOs - using documented observation to inform next planning/response to play, planning for areas that do not naturally arise and how to inject knowledge (throwing the hook out and seeing who takes the bait - or not!)
- Investigate and develop an understanding of Narrative Assessment (learning stories) - what this looks like, how it can be used efficiently within our learning environment and the use of templates to scaffold my learning.
Next, I meet with my team and share what I have scribbled down, provoking discussion and hard questions.
Exciting but scary at the same time, but it feels so right!
