This past year we’ve challenged ourselves to thinking about how kindergarten prep coverage can be responsive to student learning and well-being with considerations like the flow of the day, interests and inquiries, documentation, and the Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum.
Our prep teacher coverage was assigned phys-ed for 40 minutes everyday and an extra 40 minutes at 1:20pm(which happens to be right in the middle of one of our outdoor play in learning times) one day per 5-day cycle. In striving to provide an amazing learning experience for our kiddos we asked the following questions.
- Do our learners benefit from a full 40 minutes of phys-ed everyday?
- Do our learners benefit from a full 40 minutes of phys-ed in the warmer vs cooler months?
- How will the prep teacher communicate documentation with the team and vice versa?
- Does the prep teacher need to be responsible for developing invitations for learning?
- How does the kindergarten team communicate our interests and inquiries with the prep coverage teacher?
- Does the prep teacher need to cover a content area(i.e., phys-ed, music, STEAM, etc.), curriculum expectations, or frame to report on? Or can they continue play?
- Will we change the children’s flow of the day in order for the prep coverage teacher to instruct a content area or cover curriculum that one day per cycle?
All of these questions and more were a fantastic opportunity for myself(Kindergarten teacher), the DECE, the prep coverage teacher, and admin to consider the four frames, documentation, and the flow of the day, interests and inquiries, all while keeping the children at the centre of our decision-making.
Our teams philosophy presses us to maintain lots of unstructured play and learning time in the great outdoors. In fact, we spend approximately 2 hours outdoors in the cold weather and approximately 3 hours in the warmer months. To that end, all of us agreed that we would preserve that 40 minutes of outdoor time that happened in the middle of our outdoor play and learning(1:20pm). This meant that the prep coverage teacher would trade places with myself and continue whatever outdoor explorations were happening with me. This also meant plugging our prep coverage teacher into our documentation program, Seesaw. This gave her access to all the learning and then she had her finger on the pulse of our interests in inquiries, and could therefore extend them. When I returned she would fill me in and I would carry-on. I fully appreciate that this is an educator transition and that it lessens the amount of student transitions. This took practice, but our admin and other visitors noted how seamless it became quickly. The children’s flow of the day was preserved and it was just the educators that transitioned.
Now to the 40 minutes of phys-ed per day. We wanted to consider what the children do before phys-ed. In our flow of the day before phys-ed each day we have a time for explicit math instruction followed by math play and learning. We decided to try something new this past year and it has been a game changer for us. At 12:00 when my teacher prep time came in I passed along the documentation of learning that I was doing with a child or group of children and the prep coverage teacher slid into that role. Again, it’s an educator transition. We stopped packing up math games to go to the gym right for 12:00. If our students were engaged in their math learning we encouraged that learning to continue with the gift of time. We became responsive to student learning and not to the clock. The notion of “unhurried time” like Dr. Carol Anne Wien refers to in Think, Feel, Act became honoured. Sometimes the prep coverage teacher continued with math for the entire 40 minutes(especially in the warmer months when we had more gross motor time outdoors). Other times the prep teacher noticed the children needing a movement break and took them to the gym. Either way, it was up to the prep teacher to be responsive to the children and their learning. It gives me such delight to see children free from time constraints to do their best learning and educators honouring their important work.
I have to note how understanding and responsive our admin has been through this. Yes, sometimes the gym was empty for our scheduled time. We are a small school so that has never been an issue for us. All classes get phys-ed time each day. However, it does make me wonder if our team were in a larger school if the prep coverage teacher could support play and learning for the first 20 minutes and then take them to the gym for the last 20 minutes or not if they were engaged in their learning. Or, in the warmer months is phys-ed time necessary each day or can their gross motor learning happen outdoors?
Now for the last question, “What will the prep teacher cover? Music? Science? STEAM? Expectations?” We haven’t placed an expectation on our prep teacher to provide provocations for a specific interest or inquiry. However, at times, she has provided learning experiences when there has been opportunity or she has given input to our invitations. We have also given freedom to our prep teacher to add or change provocations at anytime based on student interest. We believe in showing our prep teacher how we trust her decisions as she fully immerses herself into the learning of the children. She also doesn’t expect that we pack up everything and then she brings in something totally different as we believe in preserving the flow of the day and continuing unstructured play for optimal learning. This is huge as it’s one less transition and students can go deeper with their learning. We don’t need our prep teacher to cover certain expectations as we believe in following the lead of the child to uncover the curriculum. Although she is encouraged to build skill development in a responsive approach. What we do expect from our prep teacher, is the same for all of us as we are a team. We expect that we all engage in child-led learning alongside children, extend children’s learning and inquiries as a team, provide responsive instruction by uncovering the curriculum in a team approach, document children’s learning and thinking(in all four frames as children won’t be selective just cause the Problem-Solving and Innovating teacher is there), and maintain open communication with the team and families.
Through this reflection period we realized some of our priorities to be the following.
We believe in…
- Being responsive to student learning and not the clock
- Preserving the flow of the day
- Creating smooth educator transitions so that the important work of students is honoured in unhurried time
- All team members documenting all four frames in a shared space(as children aren’t going to save their Problem-Solving and Innovating thinking strictly for the science teacher)
- All team members being aware of interest and inquiries and share this with each other
- Lessening student transitions by switching prep teacher for classroom teacher during play
- Letting go of preconceived ideas that the phys-ed or music teacher needs to instruct for the 40 or 50 minutes of prep time
- Letting go of preconceived ideas that gross-motor skills can only be developed in the gym(consider outdoors)
- Showing trust to our prep coverage teacher to make decisions about student learning, invitations, and documentation
Every class and school is different and one size surely doesn’t fit all. However, perhaps with more intentional conversations around prep coverage the entire team could be more responsive to student’s learning and well-being.
What are some of the ways that your team has been responsive to student learning and well-being with kindergarten prep coverage? What are some of the questions that your team still has?
inspired by play 