“It’s our polite nudge in the ribs to help you and your team stay organised and on task.”
This week’s subject is: Intentional Teaching.
Element 1.2.1: Educators are deliberate, purposeful, and thoughtful in their decisions and actions.
Have you recently reflected with your team to explore the range of intentional teaching strategies used across all aspects of professional practice?
Use your next meeting to critically reflect with your team and share what intentional teaching strategies each individual educator typically implements in their everyday practice. This team reflection allows educators to share and gain new ideas and perspectives fostering continual improvement and collaborative learning. Document these quality practices in your Service’s self-assessment and any areas of improvement in your QIP.
The approved learning frameworks describe intentionality as educators being deliberate, purposeful and thoughtful in their actions and decision making.
Educators should use their professional knowledge to plan learning experiences and routines that are based on children’s interests, strengths, and needs. This involves both spontaneous and planned experiences that support and scaffold children’s learning.
Additionally, intentional teaching involves educators utilising teachable moments and interacting with children in meaningful ways that challenges their thinking and extends their learning. This includes asking open-ended questions, providing feedback, modelling, inquiring, speculating, initiating or facilitating group discussions to foster collaborative learning and scaffold their learning.
Intentional educators:
-
- position resources and organise the physical environment in ways that support children’s learning and development, allowing them to explore, be challenged and extend their skills and thinking
- recognise that learning occurs in social contexts and that interactions and communication are vitally important for learning
- take advantage of “teachable moments” to implement intentional teaching strategies to extend children’s play and learning, including during spontaneous experiences and everyday routines
- are fully present and listen to children intently throughout their play and are mindful of opportunities to provide children the time and space to “be”
- use a variety of purposeful strategies including role modelling, demonstrating, inquiry, open ended questioning, speculating, explaining and engaging in sustained shared conversations to scaffold children’s thinking and learning
- provide time, space and learning experiences that facilitate thoughtful and challenging conversations with children
- use their professional expertise and knowledge of individual children to plan programs that scaffold and extend each child’s learning and development
- move flexibly in and out of different roles and draw on different strategies as the context of children’s play changes and evolves
- support children to recognise when play is unfair and work with children to build a caring, fair and inclusive learning community
- plan and spontaneously implement strategies to promote learning and extend knowledge across all aspects of the program and service delivery
- consider children with diverse inclusion needs and make reasonable adjustments to support their meaningful participation and engagement in the program ( Early Years Learning Framework; and the Framework for School Age Care).
- facilitate the integration of popular culture, media and digital technologies, which add to children’s multimodal play
Resources:
Learning through play and leisure
Intentional Teaching: An academic’s perspective
Finding the Balance: Play-based Learning and Intentional Teaching
QKLG: Intentional teaching practices
Within System7 go to Quality Area 1/Module 4 to submit self-assessment notes and if required, open a QIP issue if you identify any areas of improvement.
The Childcare Centre Desktop has a range of resources to assist services with reflection and documentation of intentional teaching. These include Observation Record, Critical Reflection Template, assessment of Learning Summary, Team Meeting Minutes Template, Educational Program Policy and much more.
Resources, NQS Element, Regulation and System7 links:
Childcare Centre Desktop – Childcare Centre Desktop
National Quality Standard – QA 1- 1.2.1- Intentional Teaching
National Regulations – 73, 74, 155, 156
System7 Module – QA 1/ Module 4
If you have any questions send us a note via the Contact page here!
