Number Agents

Ingredients of My Play Based Classroom Here I don't know about you, but often at the beginning of a year in a new entrant room (or any room probably) you often stop and think about the journey and how it seems it will all come together. At the beginning of the year, each one of the ingredients listed in my mind map seem so seperate, yet they come together as one so quickly. It amazes me, how in a play-based room and using Number Agents as my mathematical/inquiry approach children just begin to make their own links...almost effortlessly things come together and there is no longer 'curriculums' happening at various times, but just one....play becomes the curriculum and all of a sudden all areas of learning come together...children are learning what they need when they need it. Learning and teaching become enjoyable, natural, reflective and responsive. As we start feeding and inviting in all of the ingredients listed in my mind map, we start to see children self-dire...

Today we started hooking children into agency.  A message in the bottle appeared, as soon as one of the children noticed it we immediately came together to investigate.  There was great excitement as the message from Grandma was read.  Children worked together to solve the gingerbread related problem, with a lot of scaffolding we were able to come up with the correct answer.  We wrote a message back, put it in the bottle and placed it on the table. Once children moved back to play-based time there was great excitement, investigating the wall, trying to find out where the bottle had come from and posing likely scenarios. A group of children actually found some puppets and stated to make up their own stories related to this message. The excitement on their faces and the immediate leap into the imaginative is always an absolute pleasure to watch and I never tire of it.  I can't wait for the bottle to turn up again tomorrow. They wondered where ...

Wow, it has only been two weeks, but starting the year with play-based learning has totally confirmed my belief in this approach. Of most interest to me this week has been how this approach has completely re-defined what I see as a 'good learner.' If I think back to past years my definition of a 'good learner' was often summed up by children that followed instructions well, followed routines, chose to read and write frequently...basically they were compliant. Now it does not sit well with me to admit that I valued this compliance....I have always believed myself to be so embracing of difference, to unique learners, to the quirky...and yes I guess to a degree I was.  But it was those children that really complied, that sat up, that listened intently, that could focus for greater amounts of time, that would have largely got my praise....and these were the children that flourished in my routine based classroom. Play-based learning has completely changed my lens whe...

"Learning is a by-product of fun" I am asked quite often why number agents works and what makes it so different from other maths approaches.  I have given this a lot of thought over the last few weeks and believe the key is connection...connection in terms of relationships and connection in terms of emotions.  Number Agents really doesn't differ from other approaches in teaching maths, in fact the only thing that is different is the way it is taught. Children connect to this approach in ways they would never connect to normal maths sessions.  In fact most never ever see it as 'learning maths.' 1)They connect to each other in a new and different way.  Within an imagined world as an imagined team of experts, working together on a very important task - defeating the villains and saving their clients.  This sense of camaraderie truly allows children to work in purposeful mixed level teams. 2)In the position of experts the worry of not knowin...

We had a great first week back.  The zones we have created and the loose parts area, together with the dress up area have allowed for everything to run really smoothly. Its incredibly interesting to watch children and their interactions and to have the time to really step in when needed or to simply observe.  We wont start formal reading till week 3 but I can already see that this is going to fit in beautifully.  We are having a go at seesaw along with our individual journals and think this strategy will really give us some lovely deep understandings of the children. We have 21 children at the moment with four more to come this term.  It has been really pleasing to see how quickly they have settled into school.  Our class is destined to grow hugely this year and is is very positive to see that this play-based approach can help them settle in so well. The beauty of mess and the organic nature of the day is so rewarding, the fact that children can leave some...

I have been using puppets in my classroom for years now.  It wasn't until I started using puppets with Number Agency that I actually started to stop and think about why they work so well.  When children see the puppet villain their eyes light up, they are excited, engaged and interact very authentically with this imagined character.  In fact if you hand one of the agents the puppet they can easily take on the character.  I will often see quite shy children come alive with a puppet on their hand, or when they are talking to a puppet. Because of this high level of engagement I started to use puppets last year more widely to explore emotions and friendships.  The results were amazing, children seemed to relate beautifully to the puppet and in a way the puppet could convey the message so much better than I could.  When the puppets started to create short videos for the children to watch the learning really came alive. The Empathy family was able to guide us...