Duration: 2 minutes 36 seconds

[music]

Narrator

The evidence base tells us that play-based learning is an effective pedagogy in the early years, appropriate in both early childhood services and school settings. It is an approach that ensures every child is known, valued, and cared for and experiences a sense of belonging and agency. 

Different theories, research and world views inform pedagogy in the early years in both settings. There are a range of theories that underpin play-based learning as an age-appropriate pedagogy that teachers and educators can draw upon in their work including: 

Developmental theories, where it is proposed that children achieve milestones in an order and each stage has different characteristics such as young children learning through exploration and play with concrete materials. Another suggestion is that development is holistic, interwoven and integrated.

Socio cultural theories propose learning is socially and culturally constructed, that children learn through play, being part of and active agents in social groups. That children play ahead of their development or that ‘learning leads development,’ particularly through scaffolding by peers and adults involved in the play.

Research has identified play as a vehicle for learning and development and that there is a strong interconnection between play and the acquisition of social, emotional, and cognitive skills. The evidence shows that learning is optimised when teachers and educators provide guidance by socially interacting and engaging in shared thinking. 

It is also clear that learning through play empowers children to engage in deeper, more meaningful learning, resulting in a strong and successful transition to school and 21st century skills including communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and imagination and problem-solving for lifelong learning. 

Children’s right to play, and an education that that lays the foundation for the rest of their lives is enshrined in the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child. This reflects a world view of the importance of play in children’s lives. 

Play-based learning for children in the early childhood settings and school sets children up for success as lifelong learners.  

[End of transcript]

Duration: 1 minutes 46 seconds

[music]

Narrator

Play-based learning is a familiar, inclusive and age-appropriate pedagogy for children from birth to eight years. It is the most appropriate way for young children to learn, as it offers them opportunities to explore concepts and ideas in a concrete way that is developmentally appropriate for the way young children’s brains work.  

When teachers and educators facilitate play-based learning, they are supporting continuity of learning between early childhood settings and schools and supporting a successful start to school.  

The Early Years Learning Framework states that when children are provided with learning opportunities and experiences they are familiar with, such as play-based learning, they feel secure and connected to their new setting and will confidently build upon their prior learning.  

In early childhood settings and the early years of school, children are not developmentally ready to engage with abstract concepts or engage in highly structured lessons. Learning outcomes can be addressed through play-based learning in a fun, engaging and integrated way, supporting the development of the whole child, including their wellbeing and all learning areas.  

A play-based approach to learning encourages children to develop new knowledge and understandings and to transfer and adapt this learning. This approach to teaching and learning also allows children the autonomy to collaboratively explore, create and investigate new concepts through trial and error where teachers and children build on existing knowledge and co-construct new knowledge and skills. 

As children play, they learn social skills such as how to negotiate, problem solve and work with others to build relationships. Along the way they are refining their communication skills, including oral language development and listening skills. Through play, children practice regulating their emotions, turn taking and negotiating within a group. They develop positive learning dispositions such as persistence, curiosity, and critical thinking. 

[End of transcript]

Duration: 1 minutes 46 seconds

[music]

Narrator

A play-based learning program draws on the funds of knowledge children bring with them and is reflective of children’s strengths, interests, capabilities, language, culture, and the local community so that learning becomes meaningful.  

Learning environments that are set up with open-ended materials for children to explore, or learning centres with guided provocations capitalise on children’s natural curiosity and allow the environment to become the ‘third teacher’. This type of classroom allows children to be more focused and engaged, with less disruptive or ‘off-task’ behaviours.   

To effectively embed play-based learning as an age-appropriate practice within the classroom, it is crucial that teachers and educators act with intentionality by:  

• finding a balance between child-led and adult initiated and guided play  
• creating a rich environment that draws on children’s prior knowledge and interests  
• considering how to present activities and materials, so they are arranged in provoking and inviting ways to encourage exploration, learning and inquiry  
• ensuring documentation of learning is visible to encourage children to revisit ideas and concepts  
• facilitating interactions and meaningful conversations between children to enhance critical thinking skills.  

When play and learning are woven together, children are more likely to develop positive dispositions towards learning.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 7 minutes 20 seconds

[music]

Madeline Kemmins, Assistant Principal Curriculum and Instruction, Lisarow Public School

First piece of advice would be to start small and set up maybe one new thing or one new experience that lends itself to play-based learning and start there, have that up and running, and be confident in that and how your students interact with that before you expand.

Kylie Walker, Relieving Director Educational Leadership School Operations

We play with that as a whole school, with the immersion for play-based learning through the project-based learning as the students exit Year 6 to go onto high school. The concept that you were talking about, starting small, we engaged in, to get everybody immersed into the process and excited about it, because I think you're right, the joyous component is really important. We engaged a project in our community where we wanted to put a Metro station in Jordan Springs. And so the play-based learning was about building the train station, about that sort of stuff, but it was only one learning centre. So the kids engaged in one learning centre so that the teachers could understand the joy of it. Because I think if teachers enjoy it, then that's equally as contagious and the kids will buy what the teachers are selling. That worked really well for us, didn't it?

Amanda Stubbs, Deputy Principal, Jordan Springs Public School

We focused on 2 of those 10 classes and implementing play-based learning in there, really supporting the teachers to implement that effectively, and then we engaged learning walks and peer observations for other staff to then walk through those 2 classes. It became a little bit of a pilot for our play-based learning and to springboard from there. And then it also allowed us some time to continue building our resources to support play-based learning across such a large cohort of 10 classes.

Nicole Burgess, Principal Tacoma Public School

I've got quite a different story, I guess, being in a much smaller school, with one Kindergarten class and I just really started slowly with a loose-parts play outside and got pretty much everyone onboard really quickly, but began to feed people who were interested research. And then I'd say, "Oh come and have a chat to me." so from there I could see who was interested, who had a passion, and that's when we really started to look again, starting very small, looking at how that would look in our Kindergarten class with one or 2 learning centres again. And we really utilised our local preschools and our local public schools, who were doing play-based learning so our teachers had lots of support, and they didn't feel overwhelmed and they were really like, "Oh this is something that we can do." until it developed into every morning, having play that was facilitated by the teachers, that was interest-based, but we also really carefully wove outcomes into it as well.

Emma Pezet, Principal Lisarow Public School

Having key personnel onboard is very important. Because you have to have leadership who believes in the why, and then you have to have buy-in with staff. So as you said, picking those key people to start with who you know are going to understand the why and have the passion for it, who can then bring the others onboard is very important.

Ariana Abeni-Davis, Teacher Balmain Public School

We couldn't start small. We had to do across the board in Kindergarten. And what we had to do was go to our community first. We had the buy-in from our leadership team. We had the buy-in from our staff, where we filled out an expression of interest to work in that sort of space, and then we had to take it to our community so that we had our community onboard initially from the beginning with our journey. We wanted them to be part of it. And we even went to the point of one of our parents who was working in the new CommBank building and showing our parent community what our children will be eventually working in and what spaces they will be working in as adults. Because they could see that progression of the skills that we were trying to enable with these spaces.

Sophie Parsons, Teacher Balmain Public School

Communication that we had with the parents - we had a lot of communication. Detailed communication, we had the parents in our rooms. We had the parents coming through our rooms, and we were trying to get that message to them that play-based learning is a method of delivery. It doesn't change the what of the curriculum. It's the how we deliver it, and it's a more fun, interactive way to deliver it and that the kids would love it, we were loving it, the kids were loving it. And so the parents could see that and our community was very supportive.

Emma Pendreigh, Teacher Jordan Springs Public Schools

What you do, and why you're doing it, and if you can show them the reasoning why play-based learning is so great for the kids and they're so immersed in their learning, then I think they will come onboard; the teachers and the community.

Kylie Walker

The conversation, the excitement, the engagement of kids actually does some of the interaction that sometimes the teachers don't need to do it because the kids are excited, they don't go home and say, "What did you do today? Nothing. How was school today? Boring." They're coming home pumped, which is half the battle.

Ariana Abeni-Davis

It's well and good to take our programme, but what you need to do is look at your SEP programme and cherry-pick and pick the best bits that are going to work for you. What is your focus? Ours is totally different to yours. Yours might be anxiety and school refusal, and if that is your focus, then that's the way that you need to direct where you go, so for us, it's quite different. But that's where you can pick and choose, and I think there is no one way. You can't hand over a programme and expect to be able to teach what we do. It's cherry picking and having that leadership that can go, "Okay, this is our focus and this is where we're going to direct it." and it may change across your period of time, where you’ve got three years and then you've got your next one coming through. It will change inevitably. How can you just make it a seamless process that you can just constantly weave in and out at the same time?

Sophie Parsons

I think every school is going to be different. You know, every school is going to have different targets in their SEP plan and a different demographic, and it's about looking at what your targets are, so ours was maths, so we made a lot of kind of open-ended space and measurement tasks available. And that way we knew that we were addressing those targets in that part of our SEP plan goals. And looking at your demographic and knowing that no programme is going be the same everywhere. It's got to fit your cohort. But I think for us, the big takeaway was, stressed children aren't coming in and learning. And we all know that happy children learn. And we all know that everyone remembers things they're interested in so if you have children coming in that are happy and doing things that interest them, they're learning, and that's the point.

Nicole Burgess

It is, and I just love the ‘one size doesn't fit all’ and for people looking to go on the play-based journey, it isn't something that you can look at at another school and just pick it up and use it because it's about, like we've said, it's about the staff who are actually running it and their skills and their expertise are going to be different. Emma and I both have schools of the same size, we're both on the Central Coast. We have some similarities, but our kids are completely different and need completely different things so it's a journey that we must go on ourselves. Like you said, you can't just pick up and put it in, but it has to be supported by the top and it needs to have lots of support and processes in place.

[music]

[End of transcript]

Duration: 4 minutes 29 seconds

[music]

Kylie Walker, Relieving Director Educational Leadership School Operations 

Too often teachers have to come in and be the fountain of all knowledge. But if we're the facilitator of kids exploring it through their own immersion and we were talking earlier about setting up the learning centres that will then be able to be your stimulus for the explicit teaching in the subject area later in the day and facilitating their hot seat themselves, being able to come through, SLSOs are the best valuable resource in that space because they can have these conversations, and that can be recorded. I love watching little kids walking around with their iPad, recording, kids doing great stuff and that peer assessment is really quality as well, so facilitating teaching and learning as opposed to delivering it is a real circuit breaker; game changer I think anyway.

Emma Pezet, Principal Lisarow Public School

I think one of the biggest challenges for some people is getting past the outcomes and assessment that you were talking about before. there is the outcomes and I have to teach to these outcomes, how does this even fit into my day? So, working as a team collaboratively looking at the outcomes, how they can be delivered using the new units that we are using at the moment, the K-2 units, and working with our APCI and saying, "Okay, well how can we use those units to set up some stations in my room? So, I'm taking away some of that explicit teaching that needs to be delivered, which then creates more time.”. So, I think the time, and how is it going to be assessed is 2 of the biggest challenges that we've come across from staff, and giving the staff time to really unpack those units this year has been very different to what we’ve done in the past. Really giving them time to unpack those units, looking at what needs to be taught, how it can be taught in a play-based, facilitated way, rather than the teacher at the front delivering that lesson, it is so important.

Nicole Burgess, Principal Tacoma Public School

So coming back to making sure that for the syllabus, like you do at Lisarow, the week before the APCI or the AP goes through the content and the skills that are being taught, and actually unpacking them. If you don't have those things, that's when people are just grabbing things and putting out play for play's sake and that's not the intent, this is very intentional pedagogy. So again, that needs to be factored into RFF times or no playground duty that day or all the ways that we can be creative around that.

Madeline Kemmis, Assistant Principal Curriculum and Instruction, Lisarow Public School

And I think if you give staff the time in a structured way to place value on play-based learning, then they're going to place value on play-based learning if you provide them time to work on that with an AP or an APCI or a teacher next door to plan ahead and look at the units coming up. What can we add into play-based learning? How can we meet this outcome through play-based learning? How can we engage our students further? Providing time to do that places value on the whole process of making the syllabus and the provided units work for your school and your students and your pedagogy.

Emma Pendreigh, Teacher Jordan Springs Public School

I really utilised using those roles, so we use the Walker Learning Approach at our school. We started off with that, having the roles of the photographer and the reporter. And a lot of the times I would use that as a way to get into the kids and go, "Hey, how could you show me this?" And I would say, "Oh, could we maybe go and take a photo of a living thing today?" And it was seeing whether they actually captured that learning earlier in the week, and then talking to it in our reflection time and that being a springboard into our explicit teaching later on into the day. So, it was something that was really helpful for me because I could have that one-on-one time with a child to see whether they have understood explicit content, but still within a play-based learning time, which was really helpful.

Kylie Walker

So you used that play-based learning period of the day to then be a springboard for the explicit teaching later on in the day. How did the kids engage once you started tapping into that during that lesson focus?

Emma Pendreigh

I think they felt like they were experts at things. They were little experts that could talk to what they were learning. And rather than me being the person at the front of the room, sometimes it was that child that became really engaged in play-based learning time and they could just talk to it, and be that little expert and it gives so much agency to them to be able to go, “Okay, well, I know, I know a lot” and a lot of the time, even using their interest to springboard little mini projects and things like that.

[music]

[End of transcript]

Duration: 5 minutes 00 seconds

[music]

Nicole Burgess, Principal Tacoma Public School

We have far less problems with all of our kids who have been through the play-based learning pedagogy. When people say, "Well, where's your data? There's the data!”. Because they problem solve, they are never bored, they're able to look in the playground and find things to do. Their communication skills are better than what they were when they came to school. And I think with this, we were talking beforehand, saying this cohort of Kindergarten kids coming through, they are our COVID babies. A lot of them are not communicating well. This is why play-based pedagogy engages them and is a gift, because it's developing those skills that are needed that a lot of them don't have because they didn't attend preschool or there were mental health problems in the family or whatever. We're giving them that play to actually make sure that they are where they need to be, rather than just ploughing through curriculum and talking at them.

Emma Pezet, Principal Lisarow Public School

Talking at them, that's right. When you talk about language, if you're at the front and you're delivering to 20 students sitting in front of you, you're doing all the talking and they're not getting an opportunity to. In play-based learning, they're all talking. So they're developing those skills themselves, just from the way you've facilitated the lessons. That's so important.

Ariana Abeni-Davis, Teacher Balmain Public School

But it's student voice as well. They're taking control of their learning. And if you can be, I think the hardest part is being flexible and taking the children's lead and being able to redirect and think on your feet and pull from what you know. Because we know how students learn. We know our outcomes and our content and what we need to know is how you can you flip it and think on your feet and direct it towards something that they're interested in. And I think that's a really tricky thing because it's almost like a dance with the kids. You're dancing along with them and going based on their interests and taking off in a new direction. Why do you have to wait till Term 3 to learn about measurement? If there's something that pops up in investigations why can't you pull on a kid's interest and use that as a catalyst? Because not only are you taking him on a learning journey, you're bringing everyone in that class along with them. So even if it's just dipping your toe in the water for a very small amount of time, they've already had that engagement with it. So when you get to it in Term 3, it all makes sense. Oh, this is the reason why we are doing these things. They can see it in a real-world context and why they're doing it and it makes sense to them. And I guess, you have those constant issues of money and how you're going to access resources and you have a lot of different challenges and every school will have a different set of challenges. Our storage is a big challenge because of our buildings and how we store our resources, how we look after them, where they belong. So I guess lots of schools will have different sets of challenges but it's about how you keep it consistent every year. And the hard part is if you have one person who is the leader of it, if they disappear, then sometimes the program disappears with them. So it's about ensuring that you are constantly retraining and having your whole staff on board, because there could be a possibility that maybe someone in Stage 3 might end up in the K-2 area that following year, but they have that understanding, whoever is in K-2, that play-based pedagogy stays as a foundation and that you move forward from there. But I guess it's learning along the way of how to maintain it across the school.

Amanda Stubbs, Deputy Principal, Jordan Springs Public School

Resourcing was a little bit of a, I wouldn't say a challenge, but something that we had to overcome being a large school, having 10 classes, we had to be really creative about how we found all the resources to support our play-based learning. And, we did purchase a lot of things but were also sourcing things from the community. And we had that community buy-in, which meant that we had almost a whole group of community members supporting that play-base by collecting resources. We put it out there to families that we were looking to source certain things to support our stations within play-based learning. And we had a whole lot of things provided by the community. So yes, there was a lot of funding going into our play-based learning, but then being creative and making little kits that can be rotated around the different classrooms so that everyone gets a chance, and we had a really broad range of resources to use with the play-based learning.

Emma Pendreigh, Teacher Jordan Springs Public School

And I think going off what you were saying with the changeover of staff, because I've seen that happen this year, it's redistributing those play-based resources so people are actually aware of the equipment and the resources that they have, so they know the stations that they can set up. Because if you're not aware of what you have, you don’t know what you can build. So it's really important that you have a really nice handover with your staff so they're able to be aware of what you've done, maybe the investigations you've done, so they can kind of have those ideas when they come into the new year.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 4 minutes 38 seconds

[music]

Nicole Burgess, Principal Tacoma Public School

We have also been to some incredible preschools, some incredible public schools that also engage in play-based learning and the first thing my staff said was like, "We don't have the right desks. We don't have this, you know, the lattice, we don't have this, we don't have that. We don't have 15 laminators to laminate," all that kind of thing. And we really push for our learning centres needing to be easy to set up and easy to pack down. Because especially with the new curriculum, they need to be fast and swift because we are struggling for time and they don't need to look beautiful. They can be so effective by chucking some things on a table that may be puppets and a few little extra invitations. And that creates something. It doesn't have to be the whole puppet show with a laminated sheet of paper. I think that's a big takeaway.

Kylie Walker, Relieving Director Educational Leadership School Operations

That channels and directs them into a certain way.

Nicole Burgess

That's right.

Kylie Walker

If they’ve got less [resources], like you're talking about, the kids have got to bring something to the conversation. They've got to bring something to the table themselves. And that's where the excitement for them comes.

Ariana Abeni-Davis, Teacher Balmain Public School

So it's realising and taking a step back. What is a closed activity and how can I open it up and make it an open space where kids can come in and manipulate it and change it into whatever they want it to be at that point in time? And giving them the right provocations in order to do that. But not giving them a specific sort of tunnel vision of, this is what it is. If you're doing numbers one to 10, that's all you can do at that table. Why can't they pick something up and move it to another space to reuse it? You know? That's what we do as adults, right? We need, we create something, here we go and paint something somewhere else. So giving them the freedom and the scope in those spaces to use them however they wish and making sure that it's an open activity and an open-ended one and not a closed activity.

Emma Pendreigh, Teacher Jordan Springs Public School

And I think we were talking about the trust that we give our teachers, but I think if you trust your children and you let them, like you were saying - move around to different stations. We had a dramatic play station which was a restaurant set up and then my children were moving to the literacy stations and writing menus and were trying to sound-out words so they could write menus. And they were writing the numbers so that they could set prices. And it's like, if you close that activity, like you were saying, you are giving them a very limited thing they can do. But you'd be surprised if you give them the trust and the agency to be able to try things out. They will do amazing things with it.

Ariana Abeni-Davis

We don't have to reset the room. They will do it. And because they're in charge of their learning, it's their space, it's their home for 12 months, they look after it. And if you give them that scope and you put those expectations in, they meet them. And we all know kids like high expectations. Why aren't we making that part of play-based learning? Setting those high expectations, this is what we do at this space and this is yours, you take control of it, and they respect it if you have and you allow them that agency.

Kylie Walke

I think that's the fear people have. The fear that it's going to be a circus, that it's going to have, that the people will pass and hear the noise and think there's chaos, that the children are not going to be respectful of all the equipment and all of those sorts of things. But it's actually the flip, it's next level student autonomy and that's what we want from our kids.

Ariana Abeni-Davis

Don't get me wrong, it will be a circus every now and then!

Kylie Walker

Absolutely. It'll be, but you've got to think people are okay with it in that circus.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- And that's a very different-

- Letting go of that control.

Emma Pendreigh

But it's easy as a teacher to go, "Oh my gosh, this is chaos. Like what is happening?". But if you tune into those conversations that children are having and you go, "Oh, wow, learning is actually occurring. It's not just play, it's not just chaos.". It's really intentional learning that they're coming up with this from what you give them, from those provocations, from those investigations.

Madeline Kemmis, Assistant Principal Curriculum and Instruction, Lisarow Public School

I think it's really important too what you were saying about open and closed activities. That goes back to your resources as well. If you are presenting students with, say play food, but it's a strawberry, plastic strawberry - it's a strawberry, what else can you do with that? Nothing. It's a strawberry. But if you are presenting them with rocks or paper and construction materials, they can do anything with that. And it's when their learning will take them in their own direction, where they'll get the most value and in-depth learning from that experience. If you are presenting them with closed resources that limits what the students can do with that.

[music]

[End of transcript]

Duration: 7 minutes 18 seconds

[music]

Amanda Stubbs, Deputy Principal, Jordan Springs Public School

One of the ways that we capture that evidence of learning is, because it's play-based, it's not always something that you can capture easily. We've found that we need to be really creative about how we get that data. So we're working towards becoming a Microsoft Showcase School, so we use a lot of the Microsoft applications to collect evidence of learning. We've created a Microsoft Team for each grade at our school, and so we've got a team of all the students in Kindergarten and that team is something that our teachers engage with. And as part of the team, teachers can drop in videos, audio files, photographs, all evidence of their learning, to capture that evidence of progress. And they store that all in their Microsoft Teams, and because it's so collaborative, we've got all our teachers in that co-teaching space being able to also contribute to providing that evidence of learning in that space, which allows us to then have a look from the beginning of the year through to the end of the year and be really creative about how we can record that evidence of that learning and progress.

Kylie Walker, Relieving Director Educational Leadership School Operations

It gives us a scope to be able to do it from our phone, because we've got a Team application on our phone, so they can click and drop. The kids can also click and drop. And what's been quite powerful as the conversations you have with your co-teaching partner then turns into a professional learning suite of instructional rounds, without having to organise those instructional rounds and be able to seek and find different kids doing different things. At a point when you're working with Joe, I can be looking at Mary over there and be able to ensure that between the co-teaching model, we're across all of our kids together.

Emma Pendreigh, Teacher Jordan Springs Public School

And you're using other teacher's expertise, their passions as well. So if you're able to get a teacher that might be really passionate about maths, there's a child that needs that help and says, "Okay, well you can go and see this teacher, and you can do this work with them?" and they can put all their notes in and any teacher can look at that. So it was really helpful, as a teacher, to look back at other teacher's notes and go, "Oh, I didn't really pick that up. That's really cool that I can see that that's something I can do and work with that child now.". So, it's good to have multiple perspectives, because it's really helpful to know, well, it's not just my own view on how I can help this child but a more balanced view of it.

Nicole Burgess, Principal Tacoma Public School

And again, it's coming from above to put those processes in place, so assessment has come later for us, which I probably wouldn't recommend, but just getting our head around the actual stations and knowing that when we were looking at the syllabus, we should have then embedded assessment because that would be best practise. But as far as the Teams go, we're the same as you guys, and having, again, the resource very luckily of an SLSO. For maths, for an example, we set up a station that was an assessment station, so it was purposefully designed. And the SLSO wasn't right there on top of them, but after the children had been playing, it was actually recognition of one to 10 and I think it was pop sticks in whatever it may be, might have been stones, I'm not too sure. But she just quickly would snap a photo, and then drop it into a file, and then the teachers could see after who they had assessed and who they hadn't. But isn't that a better way that kids have come up and actually done that activity themselves? And yes, that isn't an open-ended activity, I understand that, but with our assessment, we do need to be aware that it needs to be intentional. But again, most of the class did engage in that activity. The SLSO could take snapshots, and then the kids who weren't there as yet, we could gently lead them to doing that activity or assess them in another way. So it's sort of set up purposefully, but it's also incidental, because if you have enough time in your play-based time, many of the kids will actually go and do it themselves. And I think the next thing would be like you do is having the kids snap it themselves.

Amanda Stubbs

Having that data from Term 1 to kind of remember in Term 4 how they were able to communicate a story or share some ideas. Sometimes you forget how far they've come, so it's very powerful to be able to have a look at their video from Term 1 and see how they responded to a similar question to have that real concrete example of how far they've come.

- Excitement for them.

- [Amanda] Yeah.

- Seeing their learning and seeing how they improve, and that's your data wall.

- [Amanda] Yeah, absolutely it is.

- In the staff room for everyone to see. They can see what they did at the beginning and at the end, and that's the real purpose of such things.

- [Amanda] Yep.

Madeline Kemmis, Assistant Principal Curriculum and Instruction, Lisarow Public School

I think it's important too to have those conversations with the teachers that assessment doesn't have to be something handed in, collected, stored. It doesn't have to be a written work sample. Assessment can be a video, a photograph, or a photo that the students have taken of their own work as well, demonstrating what they felt like they've learned in that activity. So it doesn't always have to be a formal assessment, which is often the connotation for some teachers when you say assessment.

Sophie Parsons, Teacher Balmain Public School

Yeah, in Stage 1, we've taken that to the extent where we have embedded it in our programming explicitly. So, for example, this term we focussed on narrative, and in the narrative program it states, ‘In our investigations, there will be opportunities for students to participate in narrative writing in the form of little books’. These are considered quality work samples and can be assessment tasks. And we've sort of tried to take that to another level with our Year 2s, where if they're creating writing or design briefs, then they're gluing it in a reflective journal of learning. And we'll take a photo of it, or we'll get an aide, as you said before, to take a photo of them working in a group, glue that in the book, and then they'll note down, "I worked with Molly, and she made the tree house and I made the platform for the tree house and we talked about what to make.". And they're reflecting on their learning in that journal in written form at a Year 2 level, and we've found that that's really helped with the sort of metacognition and all those great thinking skills and being able to use the language and talk about what they're doing, talk about their learning intentions, and reflect back on their learning, because they're able to do it in writing as well at that end of Year 2 level.

[End of transcript]