For Term 3 Rooms 5 and 6 have been joining together for Takaro Time, Play time.
I am supported in a belief by the school that for Year 0/New Entrants, the importance of play is still extremely vital to a child's holistic development - social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual.
It is widely documented that many children at age 5 are not ready for formal learning. These children have not yet formed or mastered the skills for formal learning in literacy and numeracy. These skills may range from gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and other foundation or fundamental skills. Some children find it hard to attend and sit, still needing to move as they learn. Others arrive at school with little or no literacy learning, unable to write their name, poor oral language skills, and very little general knowledge about the world.
Play also helps support a child’s transition to school. This is the environment they have come from in ECE, and familiar play spaces and equipment can help support transition, as well as linking to the ECE curriculum Te Whaariki.
These are some of the reasons I believe that a play based learning time can be of benefit to our children.
Testing a child on entry to school (SEA) can provide a window to what the child knows, or brings with them to school. But we can also find that by observing a child at play is also a way to really see the child, what they know, and how they express this, in a non-threatening way.
It is through these observations, as well as other data that is collected, that we can make professional judgments about how to support a child with their learning.
Once we build a picture of a child across the holistic domains, we can then work alongside that child, targeting specific learning. This learning does not necessarily have to be around literacy or numeracy; it could be focused on other learning the child brings with them.
Continuity of learning from one context to another is important, as well as the child coping with a degree of change, but not coping with changes that are totally foreign and overwhelming.
“Children transitioning into school are often confronted with formal teaching and learning methodologies
that contrast sharply with the approaches to teaching and learning of contemporary ECE settings these
children are likely to have experienced.”
(Carr, Smith, Duncan, Jones, Lee, & Marshall, 2010; Peters, 2010)
Mana whenua
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Belonging
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Taking an interest
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Participating and Contributing
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Mana atua
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Well-being
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Being involved
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Managing self
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Mana aotüroa
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Exploration
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Persisting with uncertainty and challenge
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Thinking
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Mana reo
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Communication
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Expressing ideas and feelings
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Using language, symbols, symbols, and texts and texts
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Mana tangata
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Contribution
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Taking responsibility
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Relating to others
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More links between Te Whaariki and the principles that key competencies are based on:
These would be the principles that would be the foundation of our philosophy behind Takaro Time.
Margaret Carr and Sally Peters have written extensively on Transition to School, and the links between key competencies and Te Whaariki.
http://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/set2006_2_023.pdf
Keryn Davis (Core-ed) has also researched re-imagining new entrant classrooms from the perspective of early childhood. Many of the ideas/notions voiced in here is what we are imagining and some of them doing in our rooms.
http://www.core-ed.org/sites/core-ed.org/files/CORE-Research-Report-New-Entrants-in-the-Re-making-v1.1.pdf
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