Early Years Learning Framework / Principle 2
Partnership
Family Input.
Now you have collected family input, how do you put it into practice?
Karen Kemp, former owner and early childhood teacher from Enchanted Tree Tops in Hornsby NSW.
Family Input.
“This method of linking family weekends to our centre has given me a whole new energy boost to my teaching. We are only a small centre and we know our families very well, but this has really connected and linked families to the curriculum.
We started after Easter and most children went to the beach and some camping. Today we pulled down the tent from inside. On one of our parent sheets we saw a father using a map to get to the camp ground. We brought in a map and a road atlas/street directory.
All we have been doing for the last few weeks was craft based around the beach, camping and maps. The maps and road atlas excited the children. We started off by showing them the street names and suburbs. When I opened the page to a map, the children were very curious and asked many questions. “Why is this green?”“That’s a park, here is a traffic light, a road”. “What is the road you drive really, really fast on and has no traffic lights” asked a child?
The children drew their own maps. (1metre x 700mm5 kg of paper sourced fromeBay). The educators assisted by labelling items on their maps. “I see you drew a large school” said Karen. “Yes I want to go to a really big school!” said the child.
We do many excursions at our centre, so we organised a walking tour using our maps to get to 3 children’s houses that were close by. One and a half hours later... The children were very interested in the road signs and street names which linked tothe atlas. We met a female ‘Postie’ and the children asked her how she turned off her bike.She showed them and continued by showing the children the letters in her bags and how they are sorted to match the numbers and street addresses. The ‘Postie’ was like an excursion within an excursion. The children talked to her and asked more questions for about 20 mins. The ‘Postie’ connected the mail to the maps and the important elements and structures of both labelling and identifying.
Maps continued further into the world.
During the week, we have been connecting our maps and excursion further into the curriculum. We have many children at our centre who were either born overseas or their parents are from many different countries. Our drawing area has now included a globe and we have placed each child’s name on their country of origin.
And I’m learning French...
One child has a new sibling and his Grandmother is here from France and speaks no English. We are enjoying learning French.
Documenting
We launched into EYLF with a blank sheet of paper. We didn’t use our old curriculum to start with. We printed out and displayed the symbols and the sheets so we could find the learning outcomes when we came back to documenting our curriculum.
The left hand side is where we add the learning outcomes after the events. The right hand side are the activities we write down. We don’t add all the activities such as lunch, etc, as far too many exciting thingshappen during our day.
Starting with a blank curriculum, and building and extending it is so much easier than trying to come up with ideas on your own.
Barriers and Problems
I rang Matt and asked,“how long should we be doing craft for?” Matt said,“ask the children how long they want to continue craft for.”
The children said, “I don’t know”. Reflecting on thishas shown me children are not aware that they are in control of their learning. We are going to explore this further by giving them permission to be in control of their learning and activities.
What amazed me is the amount each child knows, and what we don’t allow them to show as we are far too in control of the curriculum. We need to teach children how to learn, rather than teaching them content.
Family Input Problems
I had a family meeting and as a result, we have left blank sheets so each family can contribute at any time. For example, a child broke her arm during the week. We needed to addthis to the curriculum immediately. Great learning we can extend on...
This is such a better way to view children
The biggest thing I’ve realised is that we don’t really know what each child knows when we plan our curriculum. As educators,we assume too much. The new method is amazing.
Karen is meeting the Learning Outcomes through strong family partnership and having a great time.
From EYLF. Learning outcomes are most likely to be achieved when early childhood educators work in partnership with families. Educators recognise that families are children’s first and most influential teachers.
Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009 Early Years Learning Framework.