Our organisation has identified a key area for improvement as Play Based Learning. We have a national programme of play called Aistear aimed at 0-6 year olds, and this has been well developed and hugely successful in our infant classes (5-6 year olds). There is a sudden drop off of play based activities from 1st - 6th class (7-12 year olds). Teachers struggle to implement past the infant years due to: Lack of knowledge and skill set for play age 7-12 Lack of professional development courses Over-reliance on textbooks Tendency towards directional, disciplined learning (old teaching style of ‘chalk and talk’) Lack of ‘creative tools’ - toys, concrete materials and all manner of active learning resources. New approaches needed to work with the children in our Special Needs Unit and integrate them into mainstream classes in an effective and inclusive manner. Based on the above, we identified the following key objectives: 1. Up-skill our staff in the area of non-directional, play based learning 2. Improve the Integration of children with additional needs (both mainstream and from our Special Needs Unit) through increased use of play and games. 3. More class time spent on concrete, discovery based learning rather than textbooks
Our organisation is a large primary school in Ireland. We offer a full programme of education to 5-12 year olds. All teachers teach 12 subjects to their class from the core subjects of English, Irish, Maths to Physical Education, Science and the Arts. “Play is the answer to how anything new comes about” (Piaget). Here in St. Paul’s we try to place a strong emphasis on play opportunities in every subject. The challenges we have faced includes an overloaded curriculum and over-reliance on text books. ‘Too much to do and too little time to do it all’. This has resulted in senior teachers feeling like they need to forego play opportunities in order to cover the ever expanding curriculum. We support high-quality teaching, learning and assessment that is inclusive and evidence-based supporting each child to make progress in all areas of their learning and development. Evidence points towards children learning best through play, therefore we have chosen Play as our field of application.