Learning to play while playing to learn
This month we celebrate the second birthday of the Aistear Tutor Initiative – a partnership
between the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) and the Network of
Education Centres. Since April 2010, Education Centres and their local Aistear Tutors have,
through workshops and a summer course, supported over 3,000 teachers and principals in
developing practice in infant classrooms using Aistear: the Early Childhood Curriculum
Framework. This article shares the experience of two teachers both Aistear Tutors with the
Education Centre, Tralee in leading curriculum and assessment change in the infant classes
in their school.
Eva’s Story (Firies N.S., Co. Kerry)
Aistear, the Irish word for a journey, is the name of the early childhood curriculum framework
published in 2009 by the NCCA. This story describes the journey that my Junior Infants and I
have embarked on since we started using some of the methodologies in the Framework.
Firies N.S. is a 12-teacher, co-educational school. Our school has been working with Aistear
since 2010 when the Education Centre, Tralee invited teachers with a particular interest in
early childhood education, to apply for the role of Aistear Tutor. Tara Robinson, our learning
support / resource teacher, was nominated by the Centre as a Tutor and participated in a
number of seminars on the new curriculum framework. We have a policy of early intervention
in our school and Tara had already been team-teaching in my Junior Infant classroom. I had
a single-grade class of 27 Junior Infants that year and we decided to try out some of them
methodologies recommended in Aistear, particularly in relation to play and involving parents
in the daily work of the classroom.
We set out in October 2010 to change the way we had been supporting children’s learning
and development in the infant classroom. We wanted to
(a) strengthen our partnership with parents.
(b) use one hour per day when the children would learn through play.
Working more closely with parents
Both Aistear and the Primary School Curriculum emphasise the crucial role of adults in
extending and enriching children’s learning and development. Based on Aistear’s guidelines,
Building partnerships between parents and practitioners we decided to invite the parents of
the Junior Infant class to join us in supporting play. An information meeting helped parents
understand the changes we were making to how we supported their young children’s
learning and why these changes were important. We gave parents copies of the NCCA tip
sheets on play (which you can pick up from your Education Centre) and showed them the
online Aistear Toolkit (www.ncca.ie/aisteartoolkit). We showed the parents how to access
the links to various resources, and how to navigate the Toolkit. The parents really enjoyed
watching clips in the Toolkit, from other classrooms. This year we recorded the children in
Firies N.S. during the hour of play and we now use these clips to give parents an insight into
what our classroom looks like.
Following this meeting, we compiled a rota of parents who were interested in, and available
to, support our work during the daily hour of play. They now contribute hugely to the quality
of adult/child play interactions. We are working together (teachers and parents) to give the
children rich learning experiences. Parents are now playing a more proactive role in
supporting their own children’s learning and development. Adults are involved in opening up,
extending and sustaining play. Children participate with people who are knowledgeable and
who support children’s learning in different ways. It is important that children have
opportunities to lead learning through self-initiated and self-directed learning, and so the
children lead their own play during the hour. At other times of the day, learning is adult-led
through planned and guided play/playful activities.
Parents’ feedback
We were interested in finding out about parents’ experiences of the daily hour of play. The
following are comments we received from them through a questionnaire:
•
“...privileged position to be working in the class for an hour a week”
•
“...it is a great opportunity to see more of the children and teachers and become
actively involved. New respect for teachers - endless patience!”
•
“...better relationship with the school”
•
“...got to know my child’s friends and classmates”
•
“...you get to meet the other parents and get to know their children .It is nice to be in
contact with the school and teacher on a regular basis”
•
“...enjoy the different types of play”
•
“...joy to work with the children in the class and see their excitement and interest”.
•
“...I am learning from the children…helped me to understand their minds and what
they like to do”.
Using play as a methodology
How does this work in my classroom? We have a series of five play stations and we divide
the children into five groups. This means that during the course of a week, each child has an
opportunity to play at each of the five stations. We found that having the hour of play first
thing in the morning facilitated the parents who were joining us and it was easier to set up
the play stations the evening before. The children play for forty-five minutes. Below are some
examples from my classroom of how the different types of play help them to learn and
develop.
As children play in the baby clinic or with dinosaurs in the sand-box they unearth the past.
As they role-play ‘workers’ in the garden centre or restaurant they make sense of reality, and
as they play Mammies and Daddies in the doll’s house they learn about the future. Play
gives children the chance to experiment and practice what they are learning in a safe space.
It helps with their physical, emotional, educational and intellectual development. Play is a
vehicle to explore, think, invent and create meaning. Play is now an essential part of every
infant child’s day at Firies N.S.
During the play sessions we use clipboards and white labels to make quick observational
notes on individual children and we then use these to build up assessment profiles on all the
children in the class. We take loads of photographs and video clips and often use these on
the white board as part of the plenary or later as stimuli for oral language lessons. The
children explain what they did and self-assess. Observations inform our further planning and
teaching.
We follow the tidy-up with a plenary session where children are given an opportunity to tell
the class what they have worked on, how the session has gone, what they found challenging
and what they would do differently next time. Children do this in groups or with partners. It is
a time for reflection, higher-order thinking and consolidation of learning. It is also an
opportunity to promote positive social interactions, cognitive interactions and generate
curiosity. We find that the plenary sessions contribute hugely to the children’s oral language
development so the plenary has now become firmly established as part of the infant oral
language programme.
Language, literacy and numeracy through play
Play not only provides natural opportunities for oral language development but also for the
development of literacy and numeracy. Emergent writing is evident in the children’s play, for
example, as they make lists in the home corner, fill in forms in the post office, take orders in
the restaurant, record appointments in the vet’s surgery and write prescriptions at the baby
clinic. So too is emergent reading as children read the menu at McDonalds, the wall chart at
the optician’s, the letter in the post office, a book while camping and browse through
magazines as they wait in the dentist’s waiting room. Early numeracy skills include sorting,
classifying and matching as they play in the home corner or pay for items in the garden
centre. Play provides scope to create and solve mathematical problems. Children also get
the opportunity to play with different forms of ICT such as computers, mobile phones,
cameras, videos and calculators. Play offers valuable and enjoyable real life contexts for
young children to develop literacy and numeracy skills.
By using Aistear alongside the Primary School Curriculum, we focus on helping children to
develop to their full potential and to lay good foundations for later learning. The teacher acts
as a role model modelling skills, strategies, behaviours, thinking, questioning, and feelings.
But what about the space, resources and time needed for play?
I am aware of the difficulties teachers contend with as they begin to use play as a teaching
and learning methodology in their infant classroom – lack of space and resources, high
pupil-teacher ratio and lack of time due to an overloaded curriculum. Aistear gave me ideas
on how to organise the space I had available. I now have fewer tables in my classroom and I
rearranged them into a smaller space. I have turned presses and bookshelves into dividers
to create small spaces for play and I use the outdoors as an extension to my classroom.
Parents have also helped to gather play props such as dress-up clothes, items for the home
corner, art and craft etc. As a result of my increased use of play I reduced the number of
workbooks the children used. Fewer workbooks gave me more flexibility. I organised my
timetable so I could integrate children’s learning across the curriculum. Depending on the
play theme, different elements of the Primary School Curriculum are incorporated into the
Aistear play hour which actually helps to relieve some of the pressure of an overloaded
curriculum.
Furthering my work with Aistear
This school year I was nominated by the Education Centre, Tralee as an Aistear Tutor and
so I am now working as a teacher and as an Aistear Tutor with first-hand experience of what
actually works in the classroom. Our first year in using methodologies from Aistear went so
well in our school and the feedback from our parents was so positive that we decided to
extend the work into a second classroom of mixed Junior and Senior Infants last September.
We persuaded Michelle, their teacher, to try the Aistear approach of learning through play
and working closely with parents. She inherited the original cohort of parents who were
delighted to move on from Juniors to support their children in Senior Infants while Tara and I
invited and supported the new cohort of parents who joined us in the Junior Infants
classroom.
In January 2012 we had a Whole School Inspection and the inspectors were very eager to
see Aistear in action. In the feedback the inspectors said that Aistear was “working well” and
it was given “full marks”. They noted that the children were “developing cognitively” and they
felt that high literacy and numeracy skills were “rooted in the successful use of Aistear”. We
were also commended on parental involvement.
The whole Aistear experience at Firies N.S. has been an enriching one for the teachers, the
children and the parents alike. We have found new creative ways of working together,
relationships have been strengthened and the most striking result has been the increase in
the children’s self-confidence, oral language and problem-solving skills. If you are interested
in finding out more about Aistear why not join us this term for some of the Aistear workshops
by contacting your local Education Centre for details.
Our Aistear journey is just beginning.
By Eva Ryan and Tara Ní Fhoghlú - teachers in Firies N.S., Co. Kerry and Aistear Tutors
with the Education Centre, Tralee: 066 7195000 and www.edcentretralee.ie.
At the optician: Reading the wall chart and making an appointment. Santa’s workshop -­‐ He knows if you have been bad or good! Writing a list of children’s names in the class for Santa’s list. Paying for food. Learning about shapes Order from the restaurant. (Junior Infants – January) Filling in a car tax form at the post office Shape hunt in the classroom At the post office: children play with calculators, computers and telephones. Others move away from the play area to write – fill in passport applications, car tax forms and write postcards and letters.