Home and school support learning

A teacher of a prep class acknowledges the influence of a 'play-based approach' on her teaching. This is used to support her students' literacy, numeracy and social skills. The teacher timetables an 'Investigations' session during part of each day when students are allocated specific roles. These include assigning data-recording tasks and working closely with two boys on their self-selected literacy activity. She encourages her students to use their acquired skills, draw conclusions about their investigation and report these to the class.  Other adults in the classroom support the intended learning and the teacher later skillfully and appropriately reflects with two parents on the progress of their children during the year.

The teacher uses carefully designed play-based learning spaces that include art, block construction, literacy and numeracy areas. An imaginary 'café' provides a forum for the use of literacy, oral language and numeracy skills in a real-world context. As it is towards the end of the foundation year, the teacher highlights sentence structure, punctuation, 'finger spacing' between words and approximation to conventional spelling as goals for her students. The teacher is firmly convinced of the power of home-school collaboration to enhance children’s learning and she celebrates the reading and writing success of the two focus boys, referring to assessment data and congratulating the parents on their significant contribution to their child’s learning and positive dispositions.