Evolve Literacy

Weighing in on the play debate. I waited for ages on the phone but didn't get through so I posted on their ABCperth page.

I said:

The push down of developmentally inappropriate curriculum is getting out of control and our teachers are too time-poor and constrained by a variety of factors to combat it.
Children are more anxious than ever before and parents are similarly stressed and seeking a solution that is not available to them. An article in the West earlier this year said that children are starting school with a significant lack of skills and many parents are ill-equipped to prepare their children adequately for the transition to school; and that funding was going to be put towards parent education. So far nothing...parents deserve to be on the same page as the people educating their children and to be empowered to confidently support their children throughout early childhood. If parents are given the opportunity to understand HOW the brain learns and the evidence behind what we teach and why, then they can make informed decisions about how to prepare and support their children before and throughout schooling through rich and wonderful early learning experiences and won't be forced to turn to apps and flash cards. Teachers do not have the time to offer such in-depth PD to parents but do spend a lot of time trying to relay this critical information about early learning best-practice so that parents will see the depth of what their children are achieving through their play and trust the reasons why sight words and home-readers aren't being sent home in kindy. So the first issue is that parents have no access to what the reputable SCIENCE says children need to know and how their brains are wired to learn it:through rich social, sensory, cooperative, experiences motivated by child-interest and their biological drive to PLAY, wonder, inquire and explore. If parents cannot access this critical knowledge then how can they be expected to understand best-practice in early childhood? This is why we are seeing deservedly anxious parents either asking for more play and less structure or more formal learning.

The second issue is that the misconceptions and misunderstanding around terms associated with learning and play are so vast that we have lost focus entirely. Everyone's understanding of 'play' and 'explicit teaching/learning' are different. We need to go back to the evidence AND to the expert teachers working with our young children and look at developing a document that CLEARLY outlines what the science says about HOW children learn and WHAT this looks like in our early learning contexts. A lack of clarity around how play and learning are understood by our colleagues, parents and the community; combined with a lack of access to irrefutable empirical evidence (or time and ability to translate this evidence into practical application) is the problem. This is undoubtedly a complex and multi-faceted problem but we shouldn't need to continue complicating it by reinventing the wheel. Let's look at the neuroscience, the anthropogly and biology of early learning, the educational psychology of early childhood and the years of rich educational pedagogy. The research across these disciplines contribute to a vast body of knowledge that confirms how our children should learn and what they need to know to become resilient, skilled, confident, creative individuals.

We need to UNDERSTAND what it means to have balance in our early learning classrooms and guidance on how to strike this balance according to what we know to be fact: Children need access to uninterrupted free play, guided play, short sessions of carefully selected and well planned explicit teaching that is delivered with children as co-learners. Explicit teaching can be done WITH our children not TO them. Critical early literacy skills like phonological awareness and principles of counting, integral pragmatic, narrative, oral language and comprehension skills, scientific inquiry etc CAN be taught through motivating, fun, interactive, rich activities with teachers as guides and supporters, leading children to increasingly more complex understandings based on their existing knowledge, their interests and what learning we know children benefit from in the early years.

We must all be on the same page if we are to give our children the best start to learning, we know that the early years dictates the trajectory of a child's entire life so we MUST have people in power dedicating time and funding to bringing the community together through collective understanding and agreement. We need clarification of what terms like play, explicit teaching and balanced programs mean to our early childhood contexts here in Australia; clarification of what critical skills our young students really need and how these should be learned-as validated by the science, and we need to help families access and understand the important research that underpins best-practice in early childhood.

What are your thoughts on the issue??


https://www.facebook.com/abcperth/posts/1881860165180268

Should there be more play-based learning?

As primary school principals become more concerned about NAPLAN results, play-based learning in kindergarten and pre-primary is being cut back and replaced with structured learning, sitting at desks and "academic rigour".

Educator Sue Briggs says this is potentially damaging for children. Do you agree with her?

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***The evidence tells us that what parents do at home is a significant predictor of success in reading&spelling, but it is increasingly difficult for parents to determine exactly what works best. With 40 plus years in the research and practice of teaching early literacy, we can make the best of the science accessible to you. Understanding how a child's brain learns to read and spell can help you focus on the skills that really matter and enable you to confidently support your child throughout their entire literacy-learning journey

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