I am fortunate to be working with two talented Kinder teachers, Nicole and Romina, at St Peter Chanel, Regents Park, a suburb in south-western Sydney. This is what the learning space looks like for the kinder students. (Photo quality bit dodgy – took it with my phone!!) Exciting stuff!
When I visited last Thursday, the children were jumping out of their skins, they were so excited about what they were learning. One boy came up to me and actually jumped up and down on the spot repeatedly and with a huge grin, explained that they were making a billy-cart!!
The two young teachers had set up about ten different learning centres, based on investigating how things move (Science for the rest of us). Each involved hands-on tasks (construction, mapping, drawing, manipulating different objects, sorting, classifying etc) to find out how different objects moved or worked.
The cliche “engagement ” is tossed around in many conversation about learning – but this Kinder really showed what engaged learning means.
Students were questioning, reasoning, sharing knowledge, posing problems, investigating solutions, challenging each others ideas, taking risks and doing this in a collaborative manner AND…..the rich language that was being used so purposefully by these students, was a delight to hear! Considering many of them have been learning English for no longer than 4 months, it was fascinating to hear them use more complex language structures to build on their knowledge and understanding. Can I also say, there is no need for a social skills program when learning is as interesting as this!
The best thing of all was being able to see the joy, the love of learning emerge, in a totally uninhibited way.
While it may have looked “easy”, I know just how much work both Nicole and Romina had put into making the learning and the environment appear so cohesive. Hours and weeks were spent agonising over the layout of the learning enviroment. A term later, they feel they may have got it right.
As for the investigative learning centres? That came about from LISTENING to the children interests as they began their unit on movement. One group of girls shared their interest in billy-carts. Most of the students didn’t know what a billy-cart was but they were really keen to find out. So they decided to investigate billy-carts, design one out of cardboard, find out how it works, hypothesise how fast it may move compared to other vehicles…..and presto, exciting learning was happening!
I happened to stumble into Kinder last Thursday when they were actually constructing a real billy-cart out with the help of two carpenter builders. BRILLIANT!!!
So Nicole and Romina, I take my hat off to you both! I feel so privileged to be working with such dedicated and talented teachers.
Amen.
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That’s what my 10 year old nephew Tom thought of the recent NAPLAN test (national literacy and numeracy tests across Australia) that he sat in Year 5. His younger sister, Ellie, who sat the Year 3 version, had similar thoughts. She said in a flat montone (so unlike her!)
But what about the effect they can have on a child’s disposition for learning? Take Ellie. She has always loved school, revelled in learning new things, and felt OK about herself as a learner. She is a lively, animated child who is passionate about a lot of things. So when she spoke to me last night in a deadpan voice, I couldn’t help but feel dismayed.
Apparently a 
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