Connecting purposeful play with speaking and listening!

As we know ‘play’ is serious learning for children so it makes sense then to make important connections between playing and oral communication skills. The Early Stage 1 English syllabus enables this through the following outcome statements:

• Communicate through speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing and representing
• Think in ways that are imaginative, creative, interpretive and critical
• Express themselves and their relationships with others and their world

So what does that look like in my classroom?

Developmental play in ES1-

Communicating, problem solving, thinking critically and creatively while working collaboratively!

There are 5 activities planned for developmental play every day and the students choose a different activity each day that allows them to build on their communication skills of speaking and listening. Each teacher has a focus group of students to work with on a daily basis to enable them to develop and consolidate their oral language. Other students who are good role models for speaking and use of vocabulary are included within these activities. The planned activities are based on the individual needs of the students within the class and are rotated on a fortnightly basis. In this way students can improve and consolidate their learning opportunities and use of oral language from the first week. There are times that we change elements within the activity to challenge the students and extend their critical thinking and their ability to work collaboratively. There are 10-12 minutes provided to complete the activities and at times the students will negotiate for more time so that they can test out their creations or complete their task…..all part of the learning journey. We also reflect on our learning and make connections to our 6 school pillars of learning.

These 6 pillars of learning link directly with the Across Curriculum Documents of the Australian Curriculum. We have also embedded them into our developmental play program to show how they link to all our learning and syllabus documents.

Programming format for developmental play.

  One of the activity and sign in sheets for developmental play.

 

 

 

 

Every day we are working on our speaking and listening skills……..

Every day we are learning the value of play and how it connects to assist us with being creative and critical thinkers, to communicate and work collaboratively, manage ourselves and relate to others!

 

 

 

We are all life long learners and play is part of that journey……….where is your journey taking you to?