Every time your child is welcomed into one of the studios at Mother Duck, there have been many intentional conversations undertaken, and a lot of thoughtful decision-making about the ‘what, why and how’ teaching and learning environments will be offered to the children. As I have mentioned before, we work with the Early Years Learning Framework as our guide, but we are also interested in the question, “Who do we want children to be?”

Image of the child

We begin planning our work with thinking deeply about how children are positioned within our settings, and what we hope to aspire to so that children are offered many opportunities to be the best version of themselves they can be when they are with us. We carefully craft an Image of Child Statement that helps us focus on the importance of how children are viewed, which influences:

• The way we describe children to each other and families
• The words we use and what those words look like in practice, such as:
  • How we structure the environment
  • The kinds of questions we ask children
  • The way we present learning experiences
  • The decisions we make about our ‘curriculum’
  • The role children have in their own learning
  • The role adults have in children’s learning
  • The way we share teaching and learning through documentation

This also means we ask ourselves questions such as:

• How do we ensure that the children we work with have the opportunity to engage with the teaching and learning environment in an authentic way, and that they can learn to advocate for their own learning? 
• How do we ensure that they are viewed as competent & capable citizens of the now – not just the future?

An Image of Child statement might look like this:

… and educators then put strategies in place to ensure this image of child is strived for by ensuring consistency:

Every Day, Every Time, Every Child, Every Educator

Listening (observing) with intent

The next step in planning for teaching and learning is for educators to listen to children. We use the term ‘listening’, instead of ‘observing’ as we believe this gives us an opportunity to use all of our senses when we are working with and alongside children, to more accurately understand what they are doing, what they are saying (and not saying) and, what they are trying to work out as they navigate their play experiences.

• The listening tool informs all our planning and decision-making work with children and with our colleagues. 
• Everyone who works directly with the children is responsible for listening carefully to children’s play experiences and is prepared to discuss their findings in our professional conversations (studio meetings which were discussed in my July Blog).
• In this way, we ensure all children are informing our planning, and all educators are contributing to our planning decisions.

It might look a bit messy to you, but then working with young children is not predictable as we try to capture significant moments as a small group of children work and play together, or are learning to work and play together, as part of their development processes. We might listen to children as they:

• Play and investigate
• Tell play stories
• Demonstrate actions and responses
• Demonstrate skills and development
• Experience challenges and ask questions
• Work through thinking, ideas and curiosities
• Build theories about the world around them 
• Experience interactions and relationships

For example:

Curating contexts for teaching and learning

Of course, there are many other steps in our processes, but the driver of what we offer children, in collaboration with colleagues and children, is what you see above. Our contexts give us more detail on what our intention looks like in practice on a day-to-day basis. We focus on:

• Contexts for languages – role of environments
  • This is how we curate the spaces with intentionality, so they have clear purpose and expectations such as the images below:

• Contexts for practice – role of educators
  • This guides us in what is expected our educators will focus on as they support children’s play, such as:        

• Contexts for thinking – role of children
  • This is what we hope the children will gain from working in these spaces, supported by present, aware and engaged educators, such as:

I hope that this blog has offered a peek into the way we organise ourselves in providing the best teaching and learning opportunities and experiences for the children who are welcomed to all of our Mother Duck settings. In this way, we try to answer the question, “Who do we want the children to be?” rather than “What we want the children to be”. Please reach out to your service’s Pedagogical Coordinator if you would like more information on our curriculum and how we can help you be assured of your child’s learning and development outcomes and achievements.