Guided Play -

During our school review process over the last few weeks, we have received some questions about the Guided Play Approach that is being implemented in our Foundation classrooms this year. Brunswick North West has made a conscious decision to teach personal and social learning, inquiry skills, concepts and dispositions through the implementation of a Guided Play approach. Our explicit intention was to honor the intrinsic desire for play that all children embody, as well as acknowledging that many of our 2021 foundation students may not have had a smooth or cohesive 2020 year at kinder, or even of social interactions.

Learning through play (or while playing) allows children to follow their interests, investigate topics and concepts deeply and build on their prior understandings about themselves, each other and the world. Guided Play reflects and respects children’s ideas, interests, strengths and challenges, but also honours the curriculums and continuums that teachers are required to teach and implement such as the Victorian Early Years Learning Development Framework and the Victorian Curriculum. By offering a balance between child-directed play, guided play and adult led learning we can best respond to children’s individual strengths, abilities and interests.

Each Guided Play session is carefully planned with the children as the focal point – before planning, teachers will ask questions such as; What are the students interested in? What do they know about this already? Which skills do they need to develop? How can we provide children with opportunities for authentic choice within these perimeters? How can we help them to embrace, embody and experience a sense of community? Guided play encourages and supports learners to develop dispositions such as independence, problem solving, flexibility, persistence, creativity and co-operation. Well-planned play experiences can broaden children’s knowledge, skills and concepts. At times these play activities will link to and build on explicit classroom teaching; at others teachers will make connections from play scenarios to curriculum based learning.

Teachers explicitly plan play contexts that encourage students to participate in a wide variety of different types of play. Sometimes these modalities of play will be a singular focus, and sometimes some planned contexts will encourage the students to encounter more than one modality of play. Some modalities that we explicitly explore include;

Dramatic Play - Children take on roles in pretend games about familiar experiences (eg - going on a family fishing trip, sharing a family celebration, visiting the vet

Sensory Play – Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates the child’s senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing.

Constructive Play – When children manipulate their environment to create things, they are engaged in constructive play. Experimenting with materials, they can build towers with blocks, construct objects with miscellaneous loose parts, play in the sand, and draw sidewalk murals with chalk.

Science/Nature Play – Play that builds a relationship with, or, appreciation for the natural environment and/or natural objects and naturally occurring phenomenon

Collage/Art Play – Play that focuses on the process of manipulating and applying art materials to the creation of an artwork

Play with Manipulatives – Children manipulate and explore objects, parts and materials (eg - threading beads, doing puzzles, using construction sets.)

Reading – Any play that requires the students to be reading (or practising reading skills and behaviours) in any form

Writing – Any play that requires the students to be writing (or practising writing skills and behaviours) in any form

Mathematics – Any play that requires the application of numeracy skills and behaviours.

Using observations and interactions as a research base, teachers plan two different types of engagement opportunities within the Guided Play framework;

Invitations; Invitations are new experiences that students have not yet encountered. Teachers plan invitations to engage and encourage play with an understanding and knowledge of the interests, ages, needs and preferences of the children.

Provocations (or Contexts) – These come about through the observations of the teacher and the experiences and reflections of the student. The teacher observes students’ interactions and relationships with each other, their environment and manipulatives, and recognizes a ‘spark’ of interest, or a possibility of a next step in a learning journey. Provocations provide an opportunity for the students to further interact with the identified concepts and extend their understandings to a new level. Teachers consciously plan provocations with an intention and a clear understanding of where the journey has been, what is required in the moment, and where the journey could possibly head next.

At BNWPS, Guided play takes place in Foundation classes every morning at 9am. After the completion of the Guided Play session, classes move into the more explicit teaching of Literacy and Numeracy skills. Just like in Inquiry in other year levels in the school, the happenings and encounters experienced in Guided Play often provide a context for more explicit literacy and numeracy learning throughout the rest of the day.

In the coming weeks, the foundation teachers and myself will be holding a forum to share our Guided Play practice with the community.

If you have any questions about the approach, please do not hesitate to ask questions of myself or our wonderful Foundation teachers. We are very happy (and very eager) to open up the Play discussion with our community.

Writers Notebook –

Find somewhere quiet for this Writers Notebook activity.

Write down without editing or filtering the thought that you are having right now; this very second. Does this lead to another thought? Write that down too. Then write down the thought that that thought makes you think of.

You will end up with a chain of thoughts – aim for five or six.

Remember – don’t edit or filter, just write them down as they arrive.

Have a wonderful week everyone – enjoy these last lovely days of sunshine we are having.

The Specialists' Spot