This year I have moved from Primary School teaching to Early Childhood. I am grateful for being able to transfer my skills from the junior primary school to an early childhood setting. I believe there should be more flexibility between education settings for our young learners. Research shows the early childhood years are vital and range from 0-8 years, that's plenty of scope for more fluidity and cooperation between early childhood centres and primary schools.
More and more junior primary schools are interested in incorporating play-based learning in their curriculum, based on research that shows the developmental benefits of young learners being engaged in self-directed explorative style learning. Primary schools are trying to upskill in this area and find ways to monitor learner progress, so they can prove learning is happening if they incorporate a play-based setting. Primary teachers have concerns regarding how to prove learning is occurring compared to the standardized testing and reporting / national standards approach. Whereas - Early Childhood Centres have been using play-based practices for years and have well-established systems for monitoring progress in individual learners. Their format is the 'Learning Story' which outlines what learning dispositions children are exhibiting in their different learning activities. Learning Stories are a record of your teacher observations and highlight key learning in relation to the developmental stages, and next steps for your individual learner. I love the format of learning stories as they are so personal, full of anecdotal evidence, and are a great way to educate parents on the importance of play in our young learners.
Transitioning from a single cell classroom to a collaborative teaching / play-based environment. I had much more control in a single cell classroom. I miss the thrill of delivering a well-planned lesson to the class or a group, then seeing my students engaged in their independent learning that follows. But I have to say it's nice not being the only adult in the space. I am learning a lot from my colleagues. I am able to watch them interact with our learners as well as see them set up a variety of provocations in our learning environment. I am seeking advice on behaviour and communicating as incidents occur, essentially we back each other up, as well as support learners with clear boundaries and expectations as they move between different learning areas. I'm coming to see that though there are great catchphrases in teaching positive behaviour, but as always there are no magic solutions. Being able to work with challenging behaviour relies on forming strong relationships with your tamariki. And at 2-5 years they all have challenging behaviour being that they are only just developing social/emotional skills. Some teachers at our centre have long-standing relationships and trust developed with learners as a result of caring for them since they were under 2 years old. I am discovering that effective social coaching relies on children trusting that you're there for both of them, that you care for both of their interests when helping them work through a conflict.
Learning Focussed Culture / Design for Learning
I am documenting learning by taking many photos during the day, as well as observations and note-taking in my diary in regards to individual interests in my learners and ideas for resources and provocations that would further stimulate these interests.
I have had some professional learning with my colleague Amina Davis regarding Learning Stories and using Educa to format these. I have begun to read up on the learning stories of my learners -getting to know them better.
List of professional reading to support my transition, Feb-April 2020
Play based Learning - Reading Link
Urges / Schema Link
Te Whāriki
Neurodiversity
Behaviour - Social/Emotional development
