I recently posted in my number agents group on facebook about the fact play, has made the effective teaching of literacy and numeracy possible. I really like the work of Nell Duke and her take on rethinking the reading rope. She features executive functions as playing a big role in developing effective readers, which is really missing from other models.
Some people were keen to hear specifically how my day looks, so this post does that. Obviously like every school, there are often variations to our timetable and we do have swimming, which I use as one of our play sessions.
But, back to the point of this post, what does my day look like and how do I merge two approaches, play and explicit teaching (two practices people see has being polar opposite) together.
Each day, I write down the 'must do' items and the 'like to do' items, along with 'if I get to' items. These are woven around our play and form the rhythm of our day. Some days will be slightly different if we are having a specific writing focus, or are doing some process drama, visual art, music etc...just like any other class.
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Our day begins at 9am. Now children are year two, they are happy to start the day on the mat with our morning hui. At our hui we talk about what we will cover in our day...we call it our agenda.
Bite Sized Session #1 - usually we start with the first half of our structured literacy session, but I do read the room on this. We spend fifteen minutes together, but I make sure within the session they are not sitting the whole time and there is movement.
First play session - I aim for this to be 40 minutes, but every day has its own flow. During this time, children lead their own play, either inside or outside. I will meander a bit and take notice of anything I think can be used for reflection later. During this time I will generally try to catch a couple of my individual readers/spellers (I have five) or do a couple of individual stage check ins/fluency check ins.
Snack Time - we have fruit or vege snack and I use this time to either read from our chapter book, reflect on some element of play, or develop some other bit of knowledge based on what we've had as a focus. For instance if we've been reading about spiders, we may watch a quick video on spiders, or share a non-fiction text together that we can discuss.
Bite Sized Session #2 - usually this is the second half of our structured literacy session delivered whole class.
Second Play session - This is usually quite short, maybe 20 minutes, but follows the same rhythm as above.
##Morning tea## - 11am
Bite Sized Session #3 - This will be a session from our math scope and sequence. I may break it in half, or even into threes, we might work together for ten minutes at the start of our hour block and then ten at the end...it is dependent on what we are doing.
Third Play Session - Usually another 30 minutes at least. Again I either catch readers or individuals, I may catch a flexible group, this could be to read the decodable sentence we are learning as a class with my tier two children. I will roam and again try to catch something of the play to focus on,
Just before lunch we may fit in something small like a reflection on play, vocab discussion, work out my word, cvc word scramble....anything small. It might even be a quick picture book for our SEL focus, or a silent animation. I tend to maximise the use of every minute.
##Lunch##
Lunch eating is 1.15pm ...I tend to use this time to read non-fiction text, our chapter book, watch something about our focus, reflect on something in the play...read a SEL picture book ...
Fourth Play Session - This takes the rest of the afternoon, on a Thursday this is a junk shed time with our fellow junior rooms. If I have not caught up with everyone I needed to, I will use parts of this time to do this, but most children will get at least 45 minutes of uninterrupted play.
Some days the afternoon play session will be shorter to fit in something extra, or we may end up only having three play sessions. Every day children will have had at least an hour and a half of play if time is combined and they usually return to the same play over the day.
Before home I will try to link our learning from play back together and talk about the amazing learning and friendship behaviours I have seen.
At the end of the day I will scribble down what we actually did on our planner and note the things I need to catch up on...sometimes days just don't go to plan, or you get caught up in something children are really interested in and I take this opportunity to work on background knowledge and vocab in this area of interest, not to mention oral language!
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We are year two, but play largely looks like it did before, just a bit more developed and maybe a bit more focused. Any interests also usually go on for longer and tend to be extended on. For example we have some budding architects who have been using rulers and big bits of paper to create house plans from different viewpoints...they have been doing this for weeks and getting better and better. I have another group doing similar things, but with treasure maps.
Play has been a real gift for us. Our children don't usually start formal reading till just before or just after six. However phonological awareness, specific phonetic skills relevant to the scope and sequence and development of sound to print in terms of formation are all part of their programme.
Like every school children are starting school with a real 'range' of executive functioning skills (to put it lightly) but what we notice is that after a year - 18 months these have really levelled up, thanks to play! These executive function skills then serve them very well as the develop understandings in literacy and maths.
How my children are grouped:
Math - whole class, scope and sequence and problem solving as we step into this.
Structured Literacy - whole class sessions with our focus areas, largely working on our scope and sequence with a specifically written text. This includes writing.
Tier Two - five children I work individually with for literacy (twice a week)
Individual - literacy check in's based on the stage they are working on and the understandings within that stage, encoding, decoding, formation, heart words, spelling rules...etc (once a fortnight, so ten to do a week.)
Every child has three or four decodable books for repeated reading that are pitched at a stage they are quite fluent at...aim is fluency (accuracy and prosody). They have these books for a fortnight and when I check in with them I do a quick check on their fluency.
