Practice of Interaction

Interactions are the active ingredients of early learning; a complex process that happens in the context of interactions between educators and children, among children and with families.

Learning happens when educators are able to negotiate respectful connections between where and how children and families are, and the expectations for learning that are embedded in the Early Learning Program.

The principles of early childhood pedagogy point to a practice of interactions that motivate learning. In the Early Learning Program the educators work as a team to:

Understand children’s development
Involve parents by inviting their expertise and cultural capabilities into the learning environment
Nurture relationships with children that enhance their well-being and their engagement in learning
Organize the early learning environment by orchestrating time, space and opportunities to enable children’s emerging developmental skills
Extend children’s learning by building on learning that has already happened, introducing new concepts and making connections to future learning
Evaluate and report on each child’s learning

1. Understand Child Development

Human development and the connectedness of mind, body and spirit is complex and varied. But skills are likely to emerge in a predictable sequence. Educators need to understand what comes earlier and later and understand that individual development proceeds at different rates within the contexts of family and community. Possibilities for human development are wide but the progression of children’s development can be anticipated.

Documentation is a process that makes the learning visible by recording the evidence of children’s efforts and learning. It begins with an understanding of children’s development that frames the process and focus. Observations of children’s experiences are captured through notes, pictures and videos and supplemented by the child’s own representations. Educators analyze and interpret the evidence that they have collected. They are able to assess children’s developmental progress and design future contexts for learning. Parents contribute to the documentation by sharing their understanding of learning that happens at home.

Educators can gauge children’s progress and are able to make connections that recognize and expand children’s learning. If a child is struggling, educators who understand child development are able to identify specific strategies or seek out other resources and supports.

When documentation is embedded in daily practise, educators can easily communicate what they are doing to monitor progress, respond to individual children’s learning and development and plan what comes next. Documentation allows educators to answer parents’ questions about how a child is doing.

The Continuum of Development is a tool that supports ongoing documentation. It is the central component of Early Learning for Every Child Today, 2007. It outlines the sequence of skills that children at different ages from 0 to 8 years can be expected to acquire across broad areas of development - physical, social, emotional, communication / language, and cognitive. Children’s growing capacities to regulate their behaviour, attention and emotions and their emerging learning dispositions underpin the interconnect areas of development.

The Continuum of Development is made up of developmental skills and their indicators organized into the areas of development. Though presented separately, the five domains of children’s development are interrelated and no one domain is more important than another. The growing capacity for self-regulation is embedded in the developmental skills and indicators across the five domains.

The Continuum of Development moves away from a checklist of specific skills that the child has or has not achieved to more detailed, narrative modes of assessment that capture children’s learning within the contexts of relationships and environments. Narrative assessments lend themselves to capturing and monitoring the complex learning that happens when development is nurtured.

The Continuum of Development supports the abilities of educators to monitor each child’s progress through observation and documentation in order to make program decisions and talk with families. The developmental skills and indicators of those skills provide a lens to observe children’s development and plan the learning environment accordingly.

2. Involve Parents

Educators and parents share teaching and learning roles, each bringing resources and practical knowledge to the Early Learning Program. When educators can build on the experiences children bring from their families and communities, children are more secure, confident and feel included. Involving parents is the bridge that allows educators to better understand children’s prior and current experiences.

Parents learn by watching and listening to educators working with their children - responding to the preferences and observed development of individual children, guiding care routines, negotiating conflicts, extending play opportunities, using teachable moments, and encouraging emerging literacy, informal mathematical thinking and inquiry skills. Parents may have only a few minutes or may be in the program alongside their children much of the day. The starting point is a welcoming environment for all parents in all families. Same-sex parents, grandparents, new Canadian parents, fathers and very young parents are easily discouraged from participation - raising their comfort level is a prerequisite to involving them in the program.

A welcoming environment is one in which educators listen to parents and value the knowledge parents bring forward about their child’s learning and development. Parents become part of the daily practice of interactions and are able to contribute to the learning environment. They engage in extended dialogue with educators about their child’s ongoing learning and development on a regular basis and are consulted on professional issues as well as peripheral issues related to daily routines (for example, change of clothing, field trip forms, group photographs).

Educators and parents should work together to take learning opportunities home and bring home learning to Early Learning Programs. Program planning that is guided by observation and documentation invites parents into conversations about their children’s learning. Parents are able to reciprocate with their stories about learning at home. Parents should become involved by accessing their children’s portfolios and contributing learning stories and examples from home. Shared educational aims developed with parents encourage a continuity of learning. When educators cultivate a shared language with parents, a shared understanding about how children learn and develop is carried home.

Parents want detailed information about their children’s progress and want to know how best to support learning at home. Narrative descriptions of children’s learning allow families access to practices and purposes of the Early Learning Program.

3. Nurture relationships with children.

Children’s engagement in learning experiences soars when they feel included and receive individual emotional support and feedback from educators. By nurturing relationships, educators help four- and five-year-olds expand their abilities to problem solve, express themselves, control impulses and gain confidence as learners. Responsive educators who respect what children are saying, feeling, doing and thinking, help them explore issues of identity.

The child who is craving sensory stimulation and cannot sit still is not misbehaving. The child who collapses into tears when she cannot solve a problem is not a cry-baby. The child who is slow to react to sensory stimulation and constantly drifts off into reveries is not lazy.

For many children, participation in the Early Learning Program involves negotiating a new language or unfamiliar cultural experiences, and nurturing relationships with educators can make a big difference in raising their comfort level and their capacity to become engaged learners. Educators cultivate relationships when they respond to children’s cultural traditions and multiple languages as strengths and gifts they bring to the group.

Self-regulation is an effective, proactive measure of behaviour guidance and classroom management. Nurturing relationships bolster children’s self-regulation. The focus shifts from educator-enforced rules to motivate children’s compliance to internal guidance that transcends the need for adult reinforcement and direction. Educators should use their understanding of self-regulation as a lens to become attuned to individual differences. When educators pay attention to individual children and their abilities to manage different emotions and challenges, they establish nurturing relationships that strengthen children’s capacity for learning.

4. Organize the learning environment

Four and five year old children learn though active engagement, activity, observations, experimentation and social interaction with others. The social and physical environment invites their active participation and provides challenges to master and problems to solve. The environment should be one that encourages empathy and inclusion, interest in trying new things, and the development of self-confidence.

Time

The daily schedule and routines define the use of time that sets the architecture of children’s daily lives in the Early Learning Program. Daily routines and schedules should minimize transitions that disrupt the continuity of children’s activity and interactions with each other and the environment during the full and/or extended day. Also the daily schedule should take into account the needs of children who may attend for only mornings or afternoons.

When planning time for large-group experiences, educators should consider the attention span of the children, the length of time they have attended early childhood programs, their familiarity with routines, and their strengths, needs, and interests, so that the time can be adjusted according to the dynamics of the group. Educators can ensure that routines are simple, modelled and appropriate, and that they make the best use of the children’s time.

When planning time for small-group or individual learning experiences, educators can allow for revisiting or extending an activity. Large daily blocks of extended, uninterrupted time for play and child-initiated learning activities, ensure that there is sufficient time for children to get involved in their activities in depth as well as time for them to organize their materials. A minimum of one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon should be set aside for child-directed, uninterrupted activity in indoor and outdoor environments.

The day begins: Children arrive between 7:30 and 9 a.m. and are greeted by staff in the schoolyard.
Inside time begins with reading – either alone or with staff, parents, siblings, or volunteers.
Children meet with staff to share a story, plan their day, and discuss current interests.
Children choose from various learning centres. Activities are both adult guided and child directed.
The school principal is responsible for the program. Early childhood educators, Kindergarten teachers, and supporting staff interact to support children’s learning in planned and informal ways. Staff share responsibility for program planning and communication with parents.
A community school is always open to parents, siblings, and caregivers. Volunteers enrich programming, and families are linked to family support, health and intervention programs as required.
Play-based problem solving encourages emotional growth and socialization and lays the foundation for skills needed in formal schooling and adult life.
Activities are balanced with outdoor play, rest, hygiene, and nutrition.
Children may go home at lunch break, after the school day ends, or any time until 6 p.m. After-school programs are available to parents.

Daily transitions within the Early Learning Program and from home to school are both opportunities and challenges. The program’s daily schedule can minimize unnecessary transitions by thoughtful consideration of the consequences for children. Parents and educators who communicate about home and school environments including behaviour expectations and routines around meals, toileting and hygiene are better able to support children acquiring the strategies to negotiate the differences.

Space

Use of space is planned by educators for indoor and outdoor environments. Typically the organization of program space groups centres and/or materials together (e.g., house, dramatic play, and block centres; painting, visual arts, and design and technology materials; books, dual-language books, the listening centre, a computer, and the writing centre; the mathematics centre, sand table, and water table). In activity centres, educators, sometimes involving children, organize a variety of materials with a particular focus that may be related to a project or skill development. Typically, children participate individually or in small groups. Small areas for dramatic play or specific activities and projects can be defined by using dividers or shelves (e.g., house corner, writing centre, store, puppet theatre). A large open area provides space for movement and/or music activities, shared reading, group discussions and meetings. Visual displays should be at children’s eye level (e.g., charts, word wall, paintings). Educators can organize spaces for a range of activities in the outside play area (e.g., projects, pretend play, art, planting, water play, gross-motor activities). Daily routines require space for snack and lunch, washroom, coats, arrival and departure routines.

The outdoor environment provides opportunities to expand activity centres and learning opportunities. Educators should organize the outdoor environment to provide a full range of learning opportunities.

Space requirements for children with special needs must be taken into consideration. Children with mobility challenges should have easy access to all areas in the program. Educators can consider the need to provide assistive devices and supportive technology.

Educators can organize the space to provide opportunities for children’s play, independent problem solving, and inquiry. Children can learn to make choices, and demonstrate responsibility. By organizing and labelling materials, resources, and equipment, educators increase children’s access and abilities to put them away safely and easily (e.g., use symbols, photo labels, and word labels in various languages, where possible, to indicate where things go). Educators can observe and gather information on individual children in order to plan next steps and determine appropriate materials to extend learning.

Opportunities

The resources and experiences offered in the Early Learning Program can nurture and extend children’s learning. Opportunities for socio-dramatic and constructive play experiences should dominate in the Early Learning Program. Other types of activities supplement and sometimes extend children’s play in the Early Learning Program: projects, learning centres, games with rules, storytelling, educator-guided early literacy and numeracy activities and physical activities.

Socio-dramatic play that benefits four- and five-year-old children is complex. It involves shared symbolic representations and actions. Children use language to create a shared pretend scenario. Multiple themes merge and new ideas, players, toys and materials are incorporated into the play without interrupting its flow. The children are able to coordinate and integrate many roles, often switching roles to extend the play. Children stay engaged in the play for extended periods of time and begin to continue developing the play over several days. Educators support complex socio-dramatic play by responding positively to children’s play; providing rich and varied materials, making props and toys easily available to children; sharing ideas that extend children’s play experiences and enrich the play; monitoring the progress of play and coaching children who need support to stay part of the shared play scenario.

Constructive play centres around block-building with various materials, art and drawing. The physical manipulation of three dimensional materials and pencils, markers, crayons and paint brushes builds children’s capacity for planning, remembering, and representing their experiences and understandings. Drawings, collages, paintings and block building can be incorporated into socio-dramatic play. In constructive play, children are intentional – they set goals and work towards achieving them. Four- and five-year-old children typically combine writing and drawing and educators can capitalize by using drawing to make the link to literacy.

Projects are the in-depth study of a particular topic that is undertaken by a group of children. It is a piece of inquiry research that involves children seeking answers to questions that they have formulated by themselves, in collaboration with educators or arose during the course of their investigations. They are based on what children know or what they want to know. Many projects evolve from, and contribute to, socio-dramatic play. Projects include many opportunities for representation that permit children to return to what they knew, rethink and integrate new knowledge. The topic of projects is usually drawn from what is familiar to children in their daily lives.

Books and storytelling extend children’s imagination, memory, vocabulary, understanding of grammar and syntax, thinking and self-regulation. Listening to stories allows children to follow simple texts and become familiar with the meaning of print. Retelling stories promotes deliberate memory, logical thinking and regulation of attention. Creating new stories that have a story line that makes sense is a complex task for four- and five-year-old children and is connected to the skills they acquire in socio-dramatic play.

Games with rules may be similar to pretend play but the players must abide by explicit and detailed rules. They help children conform their actions and thoughts to mandatory rules and norms. They gain experience in setbacks and frustrations and having the opportunity to try again and mastering the game with practice. Game format can support the learning of particular skills or concepts. Games with rules support children’s metacognition or their ability to reflect on their own thinking. Children create strategies to adapt rules and achieve the goals of the game.

Literacy and numeracy experiences can be embedded throughout the day in authentic and meaningful ways. They should reflect the gamut from teacher-directed to child-initiated activities, with the goal of encouraging children to develop independence in their language and math learning.

Educators distribute meaningful and inclusive literacy and numeracy materials throughout the learning environment (e.g., provide books at the reading centre, class lists at a word-study centre, number cards to record attendance, dual-language books, writing materials, shopping lists, and newspaper flyers in the socio-dramatic centre; labels at the block centre; sign-up sheets for outdoor riding toys).

By building on the language development and the understandings that children bring to the Early Learning Program, educators can provide children with the learning experiences they need as well as support and guidance in their learning. Children’s ways of using language are specific to their cultural and linguistic contexts. By encouraging children to develop competence in language use, educators can also help them learn about the role and power of language in their own lives and in their own and other cultures.

Educators plan opportunities that allow children to explore language and communicate their thinking and learning in meaningful ways in a variety of contexts. Environments that provide rich and varied materials and hands-on learning experiences promote talking, reading, writing and viewing media texts. Educators model, motivate and instruct children to support their learning and attempt new things. Educators use ongoing monitoring to determine children’s strengths and needs in literacy in intentional and planned ways throughout the day.

Proficiency in oral language is critical to the success of literacy development. Educators can guide oral language development by listening attentively to and observing children’s responses and interactions, by modeling richer responses to guide children’s thinking, and by introducing new and specialized vocabulary. Although oral language is the focus of early language learning, reading and writing need to be taught and developed at the same time so that children can make connections between what they hear, say, read and write. Listening speaking, reading and writing are all interrelated and development in one area supports development in all.

Planning for literacy instructions should include consideration of a wide variety of learning experiences that develop foundational literacy skills. These experiences should encourage children to engage in free exploration, independent discovery, and independent application of what they have learned. Skillful educators plan purposeful literacy experiences as part of a comprehensive literacy program, including the use of pedagogical strategies for modeled, shared, guided and independent literacy learning activities. Children will use language and communication skills in all areas of learning. By using literacy materials throughout the Early Learning Program, children learn to view talking, reading and writing as integral parts of their daily lives.

Educators value children’s existing conceptual understanding of mathematic and monitor how their understanding of qualitative and quantitative relationships deepens. Children develop abilities to measure time, temperature, length and mass. Concrete materials provide children with tactile experiences to help them explore and describe mathematical problems and solutions. Educators extend learning with questions to promote problem solving and to challenge children’s mathematical thinking and reasoning. Children are encouraged to pose mathematical questions, explore and investigate.

Activities designed to support the acquisition of specific early literacy and numeracy skills are beneficial to four- and five-year-old children if they emerge out of a child’s interests and satisfy the child’s needs. Alphabetic principle (letter knowledge and phonological awareness) contributes to the decoding skills necessary for learning to read and can be embedded in children’s play or projects or can be presented in regular, short, isolated activities including games with rules. Activities that involve games that use a number line, one-one correspondence, and counting (for example, simplified variations of Snakes and Ladders) help children master and integrate understanding about numbers.

Physical or motor activities benefit children’s self-regulation as well as their physical skills and well-being. Opportunities for physically active play, including play-fighting, help children manage aggressive reactions. Physical activities that involve games with rules contribute to children’s ability to inhibit and regulate their movements. Also games like obstacle courses, treasure hunts and Simon Says games are opportunities to practice gross motor skills, develop spatial reasoning and sequencing skills and regulate attention.

Anti-discrimination Education and the Early Learning Program

To ensure that all children in the province have an equal opportunity to achieve their full potential, learning environments must be free from discrimination, must implement anti-discrimination practices and must provide all students with a safe and secure environment so that they can participate fully and successfully in the educational experience.

Anti-discrimination practices promote a climate that encourages all children to work to progress, affirms the worth of all children, and helps children strengthen their sense of identity and develop a positive self-image. It encourages educators, children and parents to value and show respect for diversity in the school and the wider society. It requires schools to adopt measures to provide a safe environment. A safe learning environment is not only an environment that is free from physical danger and threats, but one that is free from emotional and psychological discomfort, harassment of all types, violence, and bullying. Harassment includes many types of behaviour, such as exclusion, isolation, mockery, name calling, and use of expressions of hate.

Educators in the Early Learning Program must move beyond awareness of differences and develop the skills necessary to understand and communicate with people across cultures. They must be aware of their own world view and that of others and develop positive attitudes towards cultural differences while gaining knowledge about different cultural practices.

Given the range of developmental differences displayed by four- and five-year-old children, it is particularly important that children from various social realities learn that they are fully included and can learn in the Early Learning Program.

5. Extend early learning

Within the context of interactions, educators intentionally guide and construct opportunities to extend children’s learning. The repertoire of pedagogical strategies that educators use includes investigation and exploration; modeling and demonstrating; open questioning, speculating and explaining; shared thinking and guided learning and explicit or direct instruction.

Children demonstrate their learning in different ways. Ongoing monitoring needs to capture different pathways children take to declare their aptitudes and dispositions.

Observation and documentation based on an understanding of the areas of emerging developmental skills are the starting points for teaching and learning. Educators should use a broad range of pedagogical strategies including co-creating, coaching, bridging, and direct instruction to encourage children’s progressively more complex learning. They engage children in sustained shared thinking to solve problems, evaluate situations or extend narratives.

Educators take on many roles in play with children, using the full range of pedagogical strategies. They often engage in sustained conversations with children during play that share thinking, solve problems, introduce new vocabulary and concepts, and provoke children’s further exploration, construction and imaginations.

Educators should plan indoor and outdoor experiences for small groups of children and for the whole group, as well as individual learning experiences that address the strengths, needs, and interests of the child and that are within the range of things the child can do with and without guidance (i.e., that are within the child’s zone of proximal development). The time and purpose for these groupings are determined by a number of factors, such as the length of time the children have been in a learning setting; the strengths, needs, and interests of the children; and the focus of interactions.

Planning shifts from a focus on activities and events based on children’s interests to planning that nurtures self-regulation and learning dispositions situated in the Continuum of Development. Assessment for learning implies that educators develop ideas about what next and how to respond to what children have done.

6. Monitor, evaluate and report early learning

Monitoring children’s early learning is the process of gathering evidence about what they know, understand and are able to do. Evaluation is the process of interpreting, making judgments and forming decisions based on the evidence. Reporting is the process of communicating to parents about how children are doing based on monitoring and evaluations.

In Early Learning Programs, educators work together to monitor children’s developmental progress. The teacher is responsible for evaluation and reporting.

Monitoring

A well-planned Early Learning Program provides educators with many opportunities for ongoing observation and documentation to assess children’s strengths, needs, and interests.

The Continuum of Development offers educators key reference points to support their observations and documentations and to identify learning in children’s play and other activities.

Monitoring early learning through documentation is based on the gathering of layers of information to provide rich and rigorous evidence about children’s early learning and development. It is not the measurement of discrete skills, out of context with the children’s daily lived lives. Young children show their understanding by doing, showing, representing, and telling.
Educators use monitoring strategies of observing, listening, and asking probing questions in order to monitor children’s achievement. Accurate assessments of learning and development depend on educators understanding the sequence of development and the range of development indicators to which they should attend.
Monitoring strategies should encourage children to show what they know and can do, rather than focus on what they do not know or cannot do. Monitoring that focuses on what children can do takes into account the developmental stage of the child.
Monitoring enables educators to determine how well their planned activities and pedagogical strategies are working, and to make any changes needed to enable children to achieve the essential outcomes.
Monitoring children’s learning and developmental progress through observation and documentation makes the process of learning visible to children and to their parents. Parents can take part in ongoing monitoring by contributing their own observations and documentation of their children’s learning at home.

Evaluation

Evaluation involves the judging and interpreting of monitoring information to determine the child’s progress in achieving the overall essential outcomes. The essential outcomes are broad in nature, and how children demonstrate their learning defines the particular content or scope of the knowledge and skills referred to in the essential outcomes. The specific outcomes will assist teachers in describing the range of behaviours, skills, and strategies that children demonstrate as they work towards achieving the overall expectations. Teachers will use their professional judgment to determine which specific outcomes should be used to evaluate achievement of the overall expectations.

Children in the Early Learning Program are in transition between early childhood programs and home environments and compulsory schooling in Grade 1. They should be given ample time to demonstrate their achievements through varied learning opportunities that are appropriate for their stage of development and that are within the range of things they can do in their zone of proximal development with and without guidance. Teachers should also take into consideration that the period of adjustment to school is longer for some children than for others.

Young children demonstrate their learning in many different ways. Their success in demonstrating what they know or are able to do will also vary, depending on such factors as the time of day, the situation, the type of questions asked, familiarity with the content, and facility with the language of instruction. To allow for the range of influences that may affect a child’s performance at any one time, teachers base their evaluation on the cumulative observations and documentations the educator team has gathered.

Teachers should understand the skills needed for later achievement and identify specific experiences children may need for successful transition to Grade 1.

Reporting
Parents want regular reports about their child’s progress. Teachers communicate assessment and evaluation of children’s development and learning. Reporting indicates the child’s growth and achievement in relation to the learning expectations for the end of the Early Learning Program and should reflect achievement in the skills children are developing as they progress.
The reports should reflect evaluation of the essential outcomes in each of the areas of development. Reports should include narrative comments on the child’s achievement in relation to the overall expectations and the next steps for the teacher and for the parents in supporting that child’s learning.

Every Child, Every Opportunity
Curriculum and Pedagogy for the Early Learning Program
A compendium report to 'With Our Best Future in Mind: Implementing Early Learning in Ontario'

Overview and Acknowledgements

Foreword

About This Document

Principles

Practice of Interaction

Essential Outcomes

Next Steps

Endnotes

Practice of Interaction

1. Understand Child Development

2. Involve Parents

3. Nurture relationships with children.

4. Organize the learning environment

5. Extend early learning

6. Monitor, evaluate and report early learning

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