PROFESSOR DEBORAH PHILLIPS:
Good morning everybody. I am very, very happy and honoured to be here today. I toured Australia as a 15 year old with the California Youth Symphony, and we stayed with families in every city that we visited. And as a 15 year old, which is actually another very formative period of development, you develop deep attachments. And I developed a very deep attachment to Australia and have been back multiple times. Actually lived in Adelaide for six months, six months in 2016. So, I kind of sometimes wish I had acquired the wonderful accent that you have so that I would be mistaken for being Australian. Plus, I, have learned over the years and have followed very closely what you are all doing in this country with your brilliant early childhood policies and programs, and you just keep improving them. And it always leaves me yearning that we in the United States would look to you as a model because you are totally getting it right. And I think John would agree with me that as a neuroscientist and me as a developmental psychologist, if we could design an early childhood program, it would be this one that you have here in Victoria. And, and across the country, I realise. So, it is always a little humbling and always very much an honour to join you and to learn from you. I want to extend my thanks, to, Uncle Tony for welcoming, welcoming all of us to his ancestral land. I want to thank the conference planners who've been brilliant to work with. Just so supportive and helpful. And, certainly thank the education department for taking such remarkable leadership, with your policies and programs for little kids in this country. And thanks to you as well, for being here today.
So the title of my talk is Neurons To Neighbourhoods What The Brain Tells Us About The Criticality Of The Early Years. In this case, the neighbourhood is your kindergarten and pre prep programs. So my talk has three parts with three goals. First, I'm going to talk about the neurobiology of adversity and early learning. And this will supplement John's talk with what we know about how stress and adversity gets under the skin to affect the brain and behaviour. The second part of my talk will be about the gift of time and the practice of alignment. And here my goal is to highlight the importance of aligned as opposed to just more time, and to identify some key elements of alignment. And part three will be about playful learning or in the language of your documents, rich content woven into play. And here my goal is to deepen understanding of the intimate link between play and learning, and the critical teacher role here. And again, to reiterate what John said, I think the underlying goal of both of our talks really, as he said, is to empower you, to empower you to really appreciate the criticality of every day you spend working with and working with teachers who work with young children in your pre-K, kindergarten, classrooms. And to help you appreciate, with deep understanding how and why it is so critical. So in part, you can communicate this to others around the country, including policymakers.
So let's start with the neurobiology of adversity and early learning. Over the past 25 years, we've witnessed astonishing developments in paediatric neuroscience, especially regarding how adversity and stress get under the skin to affect the developing child, and how specifically it affects their ability and capacities and motivation to learn. Much of the excitement about this realm of science derives from growing dissatisfaction about the magnitude and durability of the impacts we are having with early interventions, including efforts to maximize the benefits of kindergarten programs, tiny fading bumps and outcomes is just not good enough. Doing something about this is my driving motivation today, and I am so honoured to be here because I know it is yours as well expressed in your best start, best life reform agenda. From John, we have learned the fundamental truth that developing brains seize experience. They are designed to seize experience, to shape their structures and connections. What I sometimes call the hardware and the software of the brain. That in turn affects how we move, how we perceive, how we feel, how we think, and how healthy we are. In short, every single realm of development as we move along our life course. This is why the early years are characterised as laying the foundation sturdy or fragile, upon which all subsequent development is built. You are not just in these kindergarten classrooms. A stepping stone to the rest of development. You are the bedrock for everything that follows. John has shared a series of compelling examples from language development and executive functioning that illustrate the unique and highly consequential plasticity that characterised the early developing brain. But this plasticity is completely ecumenical. It cuts both ways. The young brain eagerly recruits, harmful experience that can cause damage to it or or at a minimum, produce lost opportunities for development. Just as eagerly as it draws in and incorporates beneficial experiences. As a result, it is critical that we approach all environments as interventions, whether we plan them as such or not, as actively shaping brain and behavioural development. The question is whether we ensure supportive benefit environments or just let nature take its course, for better and for worse. This is why your work matters so much. This is the awesome responsibility you take on as early childhood educators, both to protect children from harm in the form of unpredictability, stereotyping and discrimination, harsh punishment, and so on, and to shower them with positive brain building experiences.
Let me turn to a few lessons from research on adversity and resilience. There is another process in addition to the proliferation and pruning and connecting and myelination of neurons that John has discussed, through which experiences leave a signature on the neurobiology and thus the behaviour of the child. It is referred to as the biological embedding of adversity, or how stress gets under the skin, and is grounded in astonishing new knowledge from teams of neuroscientists, molecular biologists, geneticists, and developmental psychologist. And I promise not to get too nerdy on you. This is the field of epigenetics. Literally epi meaning over or outside the gene itself. Specifically how things like toxins, infectious agents, harmful noise levels, and so on affect how your genes behave, whether they turn on or off, whether, when and how they will be expressed to produce what we see on the outside. Behaviourally. This process does not affect which genes you actually inherit your genetic makeup. It affects what happens with the genes that you have. For example, epigenetic processes affect the timing of the onset of puberty. They affect the development of neural circuits that code for how well you detect and respond to fear in the faces of others, which is really about the capacity for empathy. It affects whether a predisposition or susceptibility for schizophrenia or heart disease is either muted or manifested.
Stress is a major player in this process, like a toxin. Stress happens when the demands that confront us exceed our capacity to respond. We all know about this. Just think to a moment when you thought you might have lost your cell phone, or in my case, a moment when you arrive at the airport to travel to Australia and realise you forgot your passport, which has happened to me. Not this time. Stress prompts a cascade of neurochemical changes. Our heart rate increases. We sweat. Our eyes dilate and cortisol, the so-called stress hormone, floods our body. Stress happens. It's part of life. And this process is not inherently harmful. In fact, it is essential to survival. It activates us to fight or flee in the face of genuine danger. It warns us about imminent harm so that we can act. But cortisol puts growth on hold so that the immediate threat can be responded to survival in the moment today takes precedence over growth and learning tomorrow. So if this period of reaction is prolonged or frequent, the brain's mechanism for regulating cortisol for both ramping it up and then tamping it down, the stress response system can go awry. It can be very poorly calibrated. So that response can either ramp up too easily or not ramp up easily enough, and it can struggle to tamper back down. So you can get to tomorrow and learn something new. And the chemical changes that go along with these responses affect genetic expression. Like toxins, they get under the skin through epigenetic processes. So what do we see behaviourally? What do you see in the children that you are taking care of every day?
You will see hyper vigilance and reactivity. A kitten becomes a tiger. A bump from a stranger in the crowd becomes a taunt. We see a child who is quick to react, quick to anger, quick to frustration, who flinches at the slightest threat. These are kids who hate fire drills. We see extreme shyness, a retreat from avoidance of new circumstances and especially new social situations and peer groups. And we see distractibility challenges with paying attention. Switching attention. That task that John showed you, these kids are not very good at that, because they're so stressed out all the time, they can't really concentrate and know to follow the rules, when things change. And so they really can't concentrate or do that flexible thinking that is so important. So the question becomes are we are you going to build a survival brain or a learning brain? And as John has showed you, when we look at brains under the skin, they look very different depending on which kind of brain has been built for the child.
So why should you care what is at stake? What is it that goes offline in a kindergarten classroom? Most importantly, essential capacities for learning, including self-regulation and executive functioning. The ability to focus on, remember and follow instructions. The ability to pay and shift attention as needed from playing to cleaning up to eating lunch and so on. John and I were talking yesterday a little bit, and we both, coincidentally from the neuroscience perspective and the developmental science perspective, refer to these executive functioning skills as a canary in the mind. And they're one of the first indicators for you to know that there's something going on with that child that you need to pay attention to. These are seeing dysregulation, even in a child that's been well regulated is a sign that there's something you need to to learn about and find out about. More so than deterioration in language or numeracy or these these other skills guide. Keep your eye on those self-regulation skills.
These kids also show, challenges with the ability to learn from feedback to alert to mistakes and to absorb corrective feedback that affects profoundly how children interact with their classmates, with their mates, their peers. In terms of the ability to resist temptation and control impulses, how they perceive of and respond to feelings of being threatened. These kids, are very quick, as I said, to go on high alert. They have a propensity for vigilance and mistrust. And therefore it's very challenging for the ability they have to engage in cooperative group learning. Emotion regulation is another realm that takes a really big hit. Both the ability to manage one's own feelings, emotions, and the ability to both understand and respond appropriately to others feelings and emotions, with huge implications for the classroom, emotional climate. And again, the capacity for empathy and compassion. And we know it affects immediate health. You see it in the form of frequent infections, illness, colds, therefore absences. And over the life course we see it in terms of immune compromised immune and metabolic functioning. And therefore poor both mental health and health outcomes.
And this is why some of us refer to, early childhood as an education in the kindergarten classrooms as providing a crucible for brain and behaviour development. This is where children often have their first ongoing encounters with peers, where they encounter increasing demands on their self-regulation skills and on their language and social skills. Here you see the covers of two scientific consensus reports from the US that summarise the evidence based on the developmental impacts of early education of kindergarten. And they they have them here and can make them available to you. They both drive home the point that kindergarten groups are sites for stimulating minds, but also for protecting brains, for building that learning brain in every child in order to support resilience and learning. So what does this translate into for you? Providing supportive, low stress kindergarten settings, ensuring predictability partly through alignment, which I'll talk about next, and offering playful learning opportunity, which I will then discuss. This is what is meant by providing resilient learning brain building environments.
Think back to John's six tools. I had the advantage of seeing an earlier draft of his talk. Sorry, John, but you refer to them as acts of protection, and I actually love that language. So I'm not going to repeat it. I couldn't possibly provide a better list than he already has. Okay, we're going to skip that one.
And so this is why whenever I testify before groups of policymakers about the urgent need to increase the compensation and public valuing of early childhood educators and those who support them, I refer to you as brain builders, as the behavioural equivalent of neurosurgeons, because you are shaping brains and hearts and minds even more so than neurosurgeons. It works, by the way, any time you invoke the brain. Policymakers sit up and listen.
So I'm going to close this section with an example of an easily implemented, empirically supported early intervention focused on self-regulation and social emotional development. It is called the intervention as a whole is called Brain Games. It consists of little kernels of activities that teach children self-regulation skills by first learning what they are, then practicing them, and then discussing them. Rinse and repeat over and over again. Each activity is designed to be very easily implemented, slipped in between other activities in little five minute modules. Like a toolbox so you can grab a hammer or a screwdriver or a ruler. It offers an embedded approach to supporting self-regulation, not an entirely separate curriculum, so it can be easily adapted to the Australian context as well by, for example, what music you use, when you use these brain games. So let me show you one example of a kernel, and I think you will, recognise perhaps somebody in this video. So maybe I can make it work they’re prepared in the back to do it for me if I need to.
VIDEO BEGINS
(Video description: Michelle Obama dances in a classroom with children).
VIDEO ENDS
PROFESSOR DEBORAH PHILLIPS:
Oh, I don't want to do it again. Thank you. So that was Michelle Obama, in case you weren't sure. She can really move. Can't she? The idea here is when the music is playing, you dance. So kids are getting a lot of energy out of themselves. And then when it stops, you have to freeze wherever you are. And you can see how much fun the kids are having and that the teacher is also, importantly, having fun. And you think about what skill they're acquiring, that ability to self-regulate, to to just stop and freeze and take a moment and then to kick it back in again. So there there are many examples. You know, there's a whole box full of these little kernels, and you pull one out and you do it for five minutes, in your classroom. And I hope you can imagine how this translates into a more learning ready classroom over time. These practicing.
So let's turn to part two. The gift of time and alignment. In this section, we'll talk about how we can best take advantage of the nearly doubling of hours in four year old kindergarten. What does it mean to have the gift of time? How do we, what do we know about dosage and a continuous learning approach? So evidence tells us. There we go. That two years of early education is better than one. Here this two years embraces your three year old kindergarten and your four year old kindergarten, or pre prep. I guess you're calling it both things. And you now know what a critical developmental window that is. To quote from your own framework. Children who attend kindergarten for two years have better development in language pre-reading, early number concepts, independence, concentration, and social skills when starting school. Well, seemingly a statement about dosage. This is really about rethinking what it means to provide enriched learning opportunities by adding time in its developmental sense, to the more commonly discussed elements of quality, such as rate shows, teacher qualifications, in the moment serve and return interactions, curriculum, and so on. Why is two better than one? There are many, many reasons for this, but among them are the capacity to really steep children for two years in that rich serve and return in sync kind of interactions that you've already learned a lot about and I'm sure you're highly aware of. It also provides the capacity to embark on learning progressions or trajectories when earlier foundational skills are developing. In a moment, we're going to look at an example of a learning trajectory for counting from this earlier departure point. You can then provide two years of developmentally focused and intentionally sequenced instruction. Two is also better than one because it provides a longer window to examine developmental growth and individual differences in that growth, and thus to identify children who have special needs and need more. Due to early stressors, developmental delays, and so on. But and this is a big but two is better than one only if dosage is combined with alignment. So let's talk a bit about alignment. In short, it means that the second year kindergarten for fours builds on the skills developed in kindergarten for threes and so on and on and on into the elementary years. Think of it as guiding a child up a two year long staircase, with each step logically and predictably related to the one before and the one after. Fortunately, we know a lot about learning trajectories in literacy and math, and also in executive functioning. What builds on what as a guide for this kind of aligned, sequenced, coherent instruction as children move from year to year?
Here's an example of a learning trajectory for counting. Starting from a child who doesn't count at all. To beginning to learn how to count up to ten that reciter. To becoming a corresponder, who demonstrates 1 to 1 correspondence between numbers and objects laid out in a line. To becoming a counter who understands that the last number in a group tells you how many objects there are altogether. What two years offers you is the chance to help the child move through this entire sequence from 1 to 5, with aligned, intentional teaching as her guide. Eventually reaching that producer level where the child deeply understands cardinality. That that last number tells you how many and can count objects that are not in a line, and going way beyond ten of them. We have similar progressions, as I said, for language, for executive functioning and so on.
Fostering instructional alignment to produce, continuous learning across years, however, requires much more than the best efforts of teachers. It requires systems of support that are themselves aligned and mutually reinforcement, like a big net around the teachers to support intentional teaching and thus continuous learning. This is basically your role, in the early childhood space. This model of alignment here is from a team of researchers who are working with several school districts in the United States to foster a seamless system of intentional teaching and learning. It aligns closely with your framework, which identifies five priority areas. First, to improve continuity through deeper collaboration using aligned learning progression. This combines the bubbles here for instructional framework and for teacher resources and pedagogical approaches. Second, to build the research base and improve access to and use of high quality evidence. Interestingly, there's not a bubble here for that because this was developed by a team of researchers who I think I just sort of took that piece for granted. So it's really important that you have it. Three to expand teacher and educator skills and knowledge of content and pedagogy. This is the bubble here for teacher learning. Fourth, to embed assessment to improve reflective practice and continuous growth. And this is the bubble for child assessments for learning. And fifth to strengthen leadership to prioritise teaching and learning. And this combines the bubbles here for early childhood service teacher learning and instructional oversight. I think 1 to 5 are basically your job description.
To elaborate on some of the practical implications of a couple of these. One of my favourite concepts from developmental science is the zone of proximal development. The ZPD is that sweet spot just beyond what the child already knows and can do on her own, but which she's ready to enter with a little support and thus take the next step in what she knows and can do ideally, then, at each step along the way, instruction is directed at this sweet spot just beyond the child's current skill levels. This is the idea of the staircase that I mentioned a moment ago. It is also why ongoing embedded continuous assessment of each child's learning is so important. So you can see how that sweet spot, that zone moves along or gets stuck and sometimes might even move backwards. What about intentional teaching? In order to plan learning experiences in the zone of proximal development just beyond your students skill levels, but towards that next level they can achieve with support? You need to know what was learned in the previous year to be that connective tissue from the three year old classroom or group to the four year old group. The fact is that most teachers are really teaching children that span at least three years. If you are a four year old kindergarten teacher, some of your students will not have mastered what many children learn in three year old kindergarten, while others will be well beyond this, even up to a five year old level. So teachers need to think of themselves not as teachers of a as of teachers of a single year, but as supporters of learning for children who are progressing along a wide spectrum of skill levels. Functionally, you are kindergarten through pre prep teachers, providing that connective tissue across years for the range of children in your group. Children do not fit neatly into years segments that we happen to have invented in our educational systems. And so you can't either. This is super challenging and why it is so important to understand those trajectories progressions of learning. Third, it is also important that the threes and fours are exposed to similar pedagogical approaches as they move from one year to the next. So that time is not lost socialising children to a different approach to teaching. This is the notion of predictability applied to pedagogical continuity. While the content of learning evolves, the nature of intentional teaching can remain consistent across years. Less learning time will be lost when children transition to the next year and are able to say, oh, I know how to do this. This is just the way we did it last year. For example, math can be taught in very different ways. Some instruction focuses on teaching a rule for solving problems, and children practice getting the answer right. Mostly using paper and pencil. In other approaches, children use manipulatives to create their own strategies for solving problems and are asked to explain their process. Here, the emphasis is on developing deep understanding. Children get confused when they move from one way of doing math, or doing literacy, or doing whatever, to a very different approach. And this takes me to the last point. For educators to use consistent pedagogical approaches, they need opportunities to reflect on and share intentional teaching strategies across learning environments, including participating in the same professional development. Thus, the role of the service leader alignment across years can be achieved with such practices as cross year professional development. Having the same coach or mentor across years, as well as opportunities. Ample opportunities for teachers to meet and learn with one another across years. Basically, creating a learning community. A team of teachers and service leaders immersed in multi age learning.
So now let's go to the third part. Playful learning or play is joyful learning. Picture that example of the freeze game. And even though children are learning and practicing self-regulation skills, I bet if you were to ask them, they'd say, oh, we're playing a game. This is fun. I love this figure from the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development framework. It illustrates the essential need to interweave child directed play with guided play with adult led learning. It is the interweaving that creates a strong rope of teaching and learning. And in fact, I love this metaphor of a rope that's woven together by different forms of teaching and learning. It's a great way to communicate to non educators what it is you do, and partly why it is so important. And this is what gets us to your goal of providing and I quote, intentional play based teaching and learning underpinned by subject matter knowledge.
So let's look at a bit of child child directed play.
VIDEO BEGINS
(Video Description: Two children play inside with some timber blocks).
VIDEO PAUSES
PROFESSOR DEBORAH PHILLIPS:
I'm stopping it for a second. Because I wanted to tell you a couple things to watch for. Think about what skills they're learning. Not just geometry. But what social skills are they learning? And how is the playful nature of their activity fostering learning? That probably wouldn't happen, at least not the same way if this were teacher led. But also think about what are the missed opportunities because there's no teacher present. So back to the video, I think. I hope if I can get my cursor going here.
VIDEO RESUMES
PROFESSOR DEBORAH PHILLIPS:
Let's see. Oh you want to watch it all? Okay. We'll go back. I don't blame you.
VIDEO ENDS
PROFESSOR DEBORAH PHILLIPS:
It's so cute. I mean, part of the point is, as you can tell, when you, I can tell where you laughed, and I do the same thing. Part of what you get with this totally child directed centre play is the incredible social skills that are being developed and the way they work as a team and express that verbally to each other. I just love it. And I'm going to come back to this a little bit.
But play is not play is not play. And this is again from your own framework. And I love it because it offers a deeper, more nuanced understanding of this word, kind of blunt word play, each form of which offers the child different developmental opportunities with growth. I think that, in essence, play provide young children with a superpower for the development of many, many diverse skills. Some people talk about play as unlocking essential skills. This slide offers a toolbox of strategies for incorporating play into the classroom. Think about that freeze game that I showed you earlier. It really combines physical play with creative play. They don't have to each be done separately from the other, and each of these forms of play builds joy, brain circuits and cognitive and social emotional development.
Acknowledging this variety of types of play also helps us to break down unhelpful false dichotomies about play that, at least in the United States, have interfered with efforts to incorporate play constructively into learning experiences for young children. Some view play as somehow counter productive to learning that rich, content based learning designed to build subject matter knowledge and skills is distinct from, or even in competition with play. I honestly wish we could just ban the language of free play as if everything else is somehow not free. Thank you, or constrained and thus somehow bad for learning. Others believe that learning requires didactic, highly scripted inculcation of content, lessons that neglect children's essential needs to discover, explore, make mistakes and reflect. Picture four year olds at desks with worksheets and flashcards. I have seen it all too many times in preschool classrooms in the United States, and some believe that social emotional development fostered by play is somehow distinct from cognitive development fostered by instruction. Think of the social emotional development that was happening while Armando and his friend played with blocks turn taking, supporting each other's efforts, creating a sense of being a team. A lot of we statements, buddy, right. And the biggest dichotomy of all that instruction is either child directed or teacher directed and led, skipping over that essential role of guided play and learning.
This false dichotomy derives from an old debate in different theories of learning. One is Piaget's theory of constructivist or child directed learning, in which adults observe mostly and interject questions from time to time based on what the child has chosen to do. The other is based on learning theory and is referred to as direct instruction or teacher directed or led instruction, in which the teacher chooses the activity and certainly makes sure the children are learning what it is she is teaching.
Child centred or directed activity, as we just saw, is important, but children don't naturally construct all that we want them to learn through self-initiated activity. For example, they are unlikely to learn the basic foundational counting principles, such as 1 to 1 correspondence that we saw earlier. They are unlikely to develop a rich vocabulary, and they are unlikely to learn essential self-regulation strategies. Also, when teachers teach only in response to child initiated activity, some children are going to receive little or no instruction. I have been in child centred classrooms in which a handful of children wander aimlessly around the room while the teacher spends their time with more active learners. In addition, if teachers do not plan small group and whole group activities that provide systematic information about what children's current stage of knowledge and skills is, they're going to have difficulty keeping track of what supports a given child needs to grow and learn, to move into and into and beyond that child's zone of proximal development. And even in child directed learning, frankly, the teacher still plays a critical role in setting up the classroom so that the activities children can engage in support the intended goals of teacher led and guided learning for that day. Kind of like being an architect who doesn't actually build the building, but offers a blueprint that others the children, then execute. Think back to Armando and his friend. Any missed opportunities here? Were they learning anything about how rectangles can be combined to make a square? Namely, how to manipulate shapes? Were they learning anything about how to start with measuring an area, and then figuring out how many blocks are needed to fill it? This is why teacher led and child initiated need to go together like a hand in a glove. Teacher led activity is also important insofar as it requires intentionality about the subject matter related learning goal of a particular lesson. How can this goal be most effectively reached, and how best to move every child along their unique learning progression? So that each child gains improved understanding, and this entails being nimble enough to adapt the activity to ask different questions of different children, and to assess what their answers tell you about what they've learned and what they need to learn next.
I think of this as being the conductor of an orchestra. I know we've already seen that analogy, so it's another use of it, like paying attention to every instrument, every child, adapting if something goes a little differently than the rehearsal. We've already seen that today, right? Well, all of the time, making sure that every musician is doing their part to create a beautiful piece of music that every child is learning something related to the intended lesson.
Not surprisingly, then, science tells us that children need both child and teacher led learning opportunities. They are two sides of the same coin. We know that the art of teaching involves seamlessly integrating them throughout the day, and it involves that third strand of the rope guided play and learning, which is a little like drawing upon the best of both teacher led and child directed learning. In this strand of teaching, teachers are guided by the child's interests but still play a very intentional role. For example, following the child over to the block area supporting the child's exploration, interacting with the child via questions, suggestions, and so on. Those those why? What? How? What do you think? Kinds of questions. Scaffolding the child as he builds a structure to ensure that at the end of the building activity, the child has solidified or deepened or gained skills and knowledge. This is a little like being a coach.
This triple helix, or three stranded rope consisting of teacher led, the conductor, child directed teacher as architect and guided teaching and learning, the coach, is precisely what your documents refer to with the language of. And I'll repeat it again because I love it so much. Intentional play based teaching and learning underpinned by subject matter knowledge. I often refer to it as child centred teacher guided, intentional teaching, all elements of which shares several features. It is intentional, meaning that teachers plan activities with clear learning goals and prepare the appropriate materials. Teachers provide direction, but in the context of giving children a fair amount of freedom to construct their own solutions, even in child directed play, the teachers can give the children choices about where to spend their time and set them off with a guiding question. Something like think about how learning about friendship this morning can be used in what you choose to do. Teacher child back and forth conversation is extremely important. And you saw a lot of that in in John's talk. This is pretty obvious in the context of written language, oral language, storytelling, reading, but much of learning in math and science and social studies is learning the language of math and science and social studies, and about learning to communicate and explain ones thought processes. Opportunities to assess understanding are best built into the activity. Teachers observe and converse with the children while asking themselves, was the learning goal accomplished? Did the child make progress? How far did he or she get? And finally, there's always an emotional component. You should also be having fun. Genuinely sharing in the joy of discovery is one of the most important gifts you can give a young child. And of course, children do just need to play without a specific teacher designed learning goal. In fact, we all need to just play.
Let's watch. Maybe we have time for one example. So imagine walking into a classroom and seeing children with only one shoe on. Questions to consider while you're watching this clip are in what ways is this clip showing teacher led learning and teaching? And what ways is it not? What would you do a little differently? Maybe. And secondly, do you think the children engaged in this activity know they're participating in a math lesson? So let's take a watch.
VIDEO BEGINS
(Video Description: Teacher sits inside a classroom children playing a game with their shoes).
VO:
Like most preschool aged children, the students Cece Blue-Ford’s class love collecting and sorting different things, which they do throughout the year. This lesson takes it one step further with something that caught everyone's attention.
TEACHER:
This behind me. You asked me what this was.
CHILD:
Shower Curtain!
TEACHER:
A shower curtain. You guys are like ‘What is a shower curtain doing here?’ So we're going to do a fun activity. But this right here is a book. Anybody know what this book could be about?
CHILD:
Shoes.
TEACHER:
Shoes and that’s the title of the story. It is called Shoes Shoes Shoes by Anne Morris. What kind of shoe- A ballet shoe! Wonderful.
TEACHER (VO):
My lesson was set up to have the children do a shoe graph. So after I read the story, I had all the children sit down and take off their right shoe.
TEACHER:
Let me see everybody's shoes.
TEACHER (VO):
And then I identified the shoes by some attribute. Like if they had laces or velcro.
CHILD:
Sandals.
TEACHER:
What can we sort these shoes into? What are these have right here?
CHILD:
Grey.
TEACHER:
Besides the grey, it has some…
CHILD: Blue!
TEACHER:
What are these called? Strings or another word for strings is what? Laces. So now we have shoes that have laces. I think we can add it to our shower curtain graph. I love the shower curtain idea because it's large enough for the children to see it, and the squares are nicely placed where the shoes can go on there. I think it gives a good representation of the graph to use with the children. So we have black shoes. So put one here. And then the other ones in each square. It was very inexpensive something that’s accessible, an easy resource. Sorting was the main focus, but their learning algebra and data collection and analysis and graphing all of that was in there. Let's count our shoes in each different column. Black shoes. Who can tell me how many black shoes there are? Can you go count them for me?
CHILD:
One. Two. Three.
TEACHER:
Three. Excellent. It's not in the sense of what you think about when you think of older children, but is those same skills tailored for preschoolers.
CHILD:
Two!
TEACHER:
Two. Can you go find the number two carpet for me? My children love the activity. They really grasp the whole idea about what we can do, how we can sort out different things. Just looking around.
VIDEO ENDS
PROFESSOR DEBORAH PHILLIPS:
My guess is the children might just think they're having a really fun game, but you can make your decision. And what a wonderful activity. Partly because the kids get to move around a lot right? So I've thrown a lot at you today. We're going to skip this one, but I can make it available for you.
So let me summarise the main takeaway from each section of the talk. First of all, you are brain builders. You can build a survival brain or a learning brain and it is an awesome responsibility. Secondly, more time with young children is a gift. But do use it well requires intentional alignment, guided by learning progressions and a system of supports. And third, the most developmental, developmentally supportive instruction is child centered and teacher guided. At its heart, it is intentional, play based teaching and learning underpinned by subject matter knowledge.
And I'm going to leave you with the most important slide of all, because none of this can be accomplished without you. Everything I've talked about today depends 100% on children's relationships with their teachers and those who support them. You are stimulating minds and protecting brains. You are creating those resilient learning environments. You are the children's source of safety and stability and predictability so that they can learn. And as with oxygen masks on airplanes, you need to put on your own mask before you put on the child's. Your own well-being is the foundation upon which growth enhancing, brain building relationships with children are built, and your well-being depends on the deepest valuing respect and assurance of economic security that society has to offer. We know this from science. We know this from our hearts and minds. And most of all, children know it. You are my heroines and heroes, and thank you for all that you do. And thank you for letting me talk to you today.
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