Nothing can be taught.

This is a snippet from Anne Van Damm's blog that really spoke to me....

I remember listening to Emilia Gambetti who pointed out that "Everything you reach, you reach with your own thinking"... so how do I support my colleagues with reaching their own understandings about the power of play and the role of the teacher when play is at the heart of the daily experiences?

I am aware that the shift from 'teaching to learning' requires time, courage and commitment on the part of the teachers. Teachers need support as they are building understanding of learning through play. Some may experience tension as they question the possibility of meeting learner outcomes within a play-based learning programme.

Based on my own experience, I understand that children learn best through play. I know this and research confirms this. I have lived and breathed play all my life so I know it is a vital force in the lives of young children. Some teachers may believe they need to teach in order for children to learn. I believe it is important to communicate that true understanding is built through application. If teachers are not inclined to try, they will never change their point of view. Learner outcomes in the early years programmes are often broad enough to incorporate into the weekly planning. When teachers believe they have to 'teach' learner outcomes through planned activities (telling children what, when and how) they have not changed their practice. Learning is only true learning when it has been transformational and has translated into action.

Teachers have to engage in concentrated focused observations of children and think deeply about the choices they make regarding space, time, materials and relationships. It starts with reconstructing their image of the child. It is vital that teachers see the child (believe the child to be) a competent person and learner. This is the start of a new path in working alongside young children.

I strongly agree with Michelle Hill, a colleague, who wisely pointed that the implications of our new vision can't just be seen as pragmatic. It involves a dramatic shift in thinking. This shift is a result of the development of complex cognitive processes and skills. It all starts with 'listening'. Maybe the hardest part is letting go of the control over what and how children learn.

Transdisciplinary Skills: Teachers, what are we playing at?

The following is a post my previous PYP Co-ordinator posted after watching a movie I passed on to him.  Felt good to spur on action....even if it wasn't in my own school.

Chris wrote on the PYP Threads ning:

I don't know about you, but at our school we spend a lot of time planning, sequencing and designing activities to encourage kids to collaborate, make group decisions take risks and so forth. It is a lot of work I can tell you. The IB Learner Profile, PYP Attitudes and the skills of inquiry are increasingly taking up more and more meeting times. "Quite right too!" we say to ourselves - these elements are exceeding important! (I'm not denying the latter).

But are we focusing too much of our attention on the 'classroom' to promote these attributes when we should be taking a step back and looking more to nature and to the playground for our answers?

I urge you to take a reflective look at this video. Yes it is nostalgic, yes it is advocating play and yes we have probably heard this all before. But this time, look at the video through the lens of achieving the transdisciplinary skills, attitudes and learner profile. The UK school featured towards the end, has probably never heard of the IB, the PYP or The Learner Profile. But listen to the words they use when describing the benefits of play! This really got me thinking. Thank you Amber Jean Taylor (an ex colleague now in Moscow) for sending me this it spurred some though and has our staff debating.

Lost Adventures of Childhood
http://vimeo.com/36303926

I wish our staff would do the same.

There were replies to his post with some great videos:

http://pypthreads.ning.com/forum/topics/transdisciplinary-skills-teachers-what-are-we-playing-at?commentId=2012483%3AComment%3A47228&xg_source=msg_com_forum

Chris has also sent me a video with more of the same idea:

http://www.youtube.com/user/SchoolGroundsUK/featured

It's only play...

I think one of the biggest challenges with play-based learning is helping people understand what 'play-based' really means.  It does not mean 'free-for-all.'  It doesn't mean 'unstructured' and it certainly isn't a 'waste of time.'  I think teachers in play-based programs will agree that the materials we put out for children to play with are intentional.  Play in our classrooms always has a purpose.  When we are tuned-in to what children are playing, we can help extend their learning by asking that one question or making a suggestion that they might find too irresistible to pass up.  The writing, experimenting, observing and creating has meaning to them so IT IS IMPORTANT!  Then, theren are those serendipitous moments when the children take their learning in a direction you just didn't see coming and that's nothing less than magical!

A place to store all the many sites, nings, and blogs I follow and videos that inspire...

Videos:

Stuart Brown: Why Play is vital -- no matter your age

Lost Adventures of Childhood

Documentation: Transforming Our Perspective

Great Blogs and sites:

http://crayonswandsandbuildingblocks.wordpress.com/

http://earlylearningatiszl.blogspot.com/

http://pre-schoolplay.blogspot.com/

http://creativewithkids.com/

childrenandnature.ning.com

pypthreads.ning.com

http://www.teachingchannel.org/

http://www.outdoorplayandlearning.com/

http://www.letthechildrenplay.net/2013/03/be-reggio-inspired-top-pinterest-and.html

Articles:
If a child picks up a stick in a forest...
http://childrenandnature.ning.com/profiles/blogs/if-a-child-picks-up-a-stick-in-the-forest

What happens when we say 'yes' to children...
http://www.naeyc.org/tyc/article/unplanned-explorations-lively-minds

Forest play aids nursery children's mediation skills
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-17099694
 

Facebook Memberships:

     1) The Nature Nurture Project
     2) Learning for Life
     3) Creative With Kids
     4) Reggio Emilia Approach Interest Group
     5) Sightlines Initiative (UK Reggio)
     6) The Learning Caravan
     7) Pre-schoolplay
     8) The PYP and the Importance of Play
     9) PYP Xchange

Facebook administrator of Reggio Emilia Study Tour Oct 2011
   

My Two Cents Regarding Assessment in the PYP....

1) Conceptual Understanding in Early Years Children

Young children are different than us adults. They don’t celebrate their understandings like we do. It feels natural for them to find out and then, without the celebration, they connect and apply it further. Constantly. Naturally. Some at a slower/faster pace than others, but conceptual understanding is always present in children.

I like that we attempt to have prevailing concepts over our units and work hard to help children make concept connections in a transdisciplinary way, but this is impossible to force, in my opinion. A child does this naturally and I find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to assess. However, I find it easy to observe experiences that enable connections. Why can assessment not be simply observing in order to reflect on what has been learned and then use that to develop further or new understandings? Documentation.

2) Summative Assessments in the Early Years 

I find summative assessments baffling! In a similar way, it feels right to hold ourselves in the formative form of assessment all throughout the units (and our units do extend beyond the timed borders, overlap and spiral, but not officially!) We don’t have a task, but on-going observation instead.

Our summative assessment comes in the form of a rubric, which really is a continuum of sorts. Each unit has a four-columned continuum in which we lay out general educational objectives, or hypotheses of what learning could happen on the basis of our knowledge of the children and of our previous experiences. Along with Reggio-styled documentation of the engagements throughout the unit, the rubric/continuum keeps us connected to the central idea and lines of inquiry, and to each other as separate classrooms with shared but somewhat varied expressions of the unit. We also have space at the bottom of the rubric/continuum for anecdotal documentation of learner profile traits, attitudes, and action that the children have displayed throughout the unit. Parental observations are included too.

Since observation and documentation of the groups’ learning is a clear way to record understanding, these documents naturally fit into each child’s portfolio. The unit rubric/continuum does too. We keep record of their growth of understanding of unit concepts by revisiting earlier units’ continuums, and hopefully, by the end of the year, the children have progressed through the columns.

3) Central Ideas and Reggio Projects

The PYP is already Reggio inspired. It was in conception, from what I understand.

As I see it, the units in early years are vehicles for understanding. It seems that in order to avoid restriction because of the planners, we open up our Central Ideas. We try to make them broad and meaningful to children. This has worked for us, developing units that hopefully help us to observe scientific method, while creating provocations in our environment with social-constructivism in mind. I am not opposed to having the Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry because these help keep a team of teachers, children and the big players that we often forget about, parents, connected. I also think that in international schools, we get a lot of movement of teachers in and out of the Early Years. Removing Central Ideas and developing topics or projects, as suggested above, puts a lot of responsibility on the educators who may not have the experience or the confidence needed to respectfully listen to the children and develop projects.

Freezing but sunny in Moscow,
Amber

Lost Adventures of Childhood

I found the most amazing movie about the importance of Free Play in childhood. 

Lost Adventures of Childhood

Makes me rethink everything about my life in ways....how I teach, how I raise my child, what changes I may need to make in my life to help my son have the play space that he needs. 

This movie has also helped me to feel confident and proud of my teaching esthetic.  I need to keep passing it on.

There is no going back now...

Key Principles of the Reggio Approach

All children have potential
'Our image of the child is rich in potential, strong, powerful, competent and, most of all connected to adults and other children.' (Loris Malaguzzi)
From birth the child has the need and the right to communicate and interact with others. Through energy and curiousity the child constructs her own learning.

Children are connected
The child is a member of a family and a community rather than an isolated individual. The child learns through interaction with peers, adults, objects and symbols. Preschool centres are seen as a system of relations embedded in a wider social system.

The reciprocity of children
 'Children are very open to exchanges and reciprocity as deeds and acts of love which they not only want to receive but also to offer. These form the basis of their ability to experience authentic growth, dependent on the elements listed above, as well as on conflict and error.' (Carlina Rinaldi)

Children are communicators
Children have the right to use many forms of symbolic representation: words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, collage, dramatic play, music (the hundred languages). In using many materials they discover, communicate what they know and understand, what they wonder about, question and imagine.

The environment is the third teacher
Space is designed to encourage encounters, communication and relationships. There is order and beauty in the organisation of materials; every corner of space has an identity and purpose. The piazza and the atelier are at the heart of the preschool centre.

Educators are partners, nurturers and guides
Educators and artists (atelierista) facilitate children's exploration of themes - short- or long-term projects - and guide experiences of open-ended discovery and problem-solving. They know how to plan, observe and listen closely to children; how to ask questions, discover children's ideas, hypotheses and theories and provide occasions for discovery and learning.

Educators are researchers
In pairs, through discussion and interpretation of their own work and the work of the children, they see themselves as researchers, and are engaged in continuous on-going training and theoretical exploration.

Documentation as communication
Careful consideration and attention is given to the presentation of the thinking of the children and the adults who work with them.
Transcriptions of children's words and dialogues, photographs, drawings - many different media - are used. Parents can see what has been happening and educators increase their understanding and exchange ideas. The children feel valued and take pleasure in the process of learning.

Parents as partners
Active partnership in children's learning experience. Exchange of ideas and sharing of different wisdoms. Parents are 'resource people' too. The centre is an open welcoming place.

Education is about asking questions
 'The task of these resource people is not simply to satisfy or answer questions, but instead to help children discover answers and, more importantly still, to help them ask themselves good questions.' (Carlina Rinaldi)