This post is a final reflective piece pulling together your thoughts on the project process and outcomes. It is intended as to support students in thinking about their own learning and evaluating their contributions. I have divided this post into several categories.
Documentation – there are photos on our Slack channel that you are all free to use in your blogs and assessments.
Context of this project
As you start to address what is needed in this project you can draw on these reports which cover some of the topics that you told me you planned to focus your assessments on.
- An excellent article on the growth of outdoor learning in Scotland click here
- An article about the benefits of unstructured learning click here
- Interesting piece linking risk taking to lowered anxiety click here
- An awesome article that you all should read! click here now!
Evaluation of our process
The key to the success of the project so far has been the way in which you as individuals have grown in confidence and begun to take control of the practical tasks. I’m sure each of you have reflections about the good parts of this and also how perhaps some of you have struggled with this rather different way of learning.
It feels to me that this is an area that really needs to be more developed by you as individuals and which would suit more regular group meetings to deepen our individual reflections through group discussions. I think the learning from these reflections will also directly relate to how you, as educators, develop the ability to step away from directing and influencing play (which is how we often naturally teach) to really letting the children take the lead. Questions that arise and thoughts on the process can then be enriched by our readings around the area. Some questions that have arisen for me are below and I’ve collated the following links to add to the existing blog posts to guide our learning:
- Has the concept of ‘loose parts’ become so popular that it has lost it’s original worth? Teacher Tom questions this in his blog post here
- How can we strive to ensure that play is really unstructured? Fairy Dust Teaching debate this here and their site is an excellent resource to explore.
- How can we as educators prove that a truly unstructured approach to play can still produce the learning outcomes required by the UK curriculum? How can we use this evidence to challenge and influence policy withing educational settings and within a wider statutory context? This study from Australia provides a framework that you could use to relate observations of early years play to UK Early Years targets – wold anyone like to have a go at doing this? Reflection of S.T.E.M. Activities using resources from the Mobile Junk and Nature Playground.
Future Work
It feels to me that we have just scratched the surface with our approach to this area. I would welcome more explorations in loose parts play to be planned by EdLab students.
I want to invite you to contribute to future Garden Explorers sessions (every Thursday at 11am) whether suggesting an activity (please plan this with Holly in advance) or simply observing play taking place on site. Depending on your level of involvement in the project so far, you may need to do this project to cover your required hours of project work and to give you the opportunity to apply the ideas behind this project to practice, or you may use this to deepen your understanding to build on your previous work.
In either case here is the challenge.
Create one or more 15-45 minute activity which supports the kind of work we have been doing. This should be based on your own hunches of what feels right and inspired by the readings you have been undertaken.
You should make some activity resources and write a plan that will allow a non-expert to deliver your session. You could imagine a volunteer at one of our community events, after school setting, or a parent at home as the person you are writing it for.
Share these resources and your plan in a blog post which can be linked to from the Slack group This can be as images, word documents, powerpoint presentations or just as part of the blog post itself.
Get this to me as soon as you can and I will give you feedback on it and give you additional links to related theory which you can include in your EdLab work.
Recap on assessment
The following online resources address assessment
– This one is an overview of the assessment requirements of the unit
– This one talks about the common assessment that ALL the students will complete
If you are doing a 30 credit version of the unit and need to complete an extra assessment here is the briefing:
Environmental Play 