Thinking About our Learning

You may have heard your child come home and talk about being a 'focus child' for the day, a 'reporter' or a 'photographer'. Let me explain a little about what is happening when they take on one of those roles and why we are doing this.

There are a few aims of using this structure during their 'choice' or 'play' time. Firstly, I want the children to be planning and making thoughtful choices about what they are going to do that day. We have a few key learning objectives for the day posted on the board which we have discussed at our morning meeting. We mention these again and wonder if we will see any of that learning happening during this time - or maybe something that was a learning focus from a previous day!!

I also want children to begin to understand that they are learning so many great things and we should acknowledge and celebrate this. It is also important to start to persevere with a project over a prolonged period of time rather than change focus very 10 minutes - and already I am seeing some great sustained work taking place.

The 3 focus children stand out the front at the beginning of the session and explain to the class what they are going to choose to do for the session. The 2 reporters draw pictures and note down the learning they see happening during the session and the photographer takes photos of things of interest they see happening. At the end we have a reflection time where the focus children and reporters report back to the class about what they did or saw and we view the photographs taken by the photographer.

The children are taking their roles very seriously and it is wonderful to see their confidence beginning to develop when sharing their thoughts or observations with the class. If you have a chance please ask if they have taken on any of these roles this week - each child has taken on at least one of these roles at some point during the week.