Kindergarten teachers, are you feeling overwhelmed yet? New curriculum, mandatory government
testing, progress reports, ELL Benchmarks, and so on! Rest assured that we are all feeling the pressure!

Let’s flip to the positive and focus on what we can do and what we can control.

We can control how we facilitate play. Let’s take a look at two different types of play:
Play-based and play-responsive teaching are two approaches that harness the power of play to support children’s development.

Two Types of Play:
● Play-based: Create engaging learning labs with areas like block centers and pretend stores.
Children learn through self-directed play, developing essential skills while having fun.
● Play-responsive: Take play-based learning further by weaving in curriculum-inspired
opportunities. Imagine children counting coins in a pretend store or writing menus for their
pretend restaurant!

Are you looking for evidence of learning to use for progress reports? Use guiding questions or “I can” statements to design learning opportunities based on the KUSPs. Have students practice printing skills in shaving cream and photograph the evidence. “I can print my name” or “I can start my letters at the top.”

Individual Education Plan goals can be written to target an area of growth based on observation through play. For example, A student working on a goal area of communicative language can be supported by using teacher-modelled statements and suggestions such as, “I don’t like that” and

“Let’s set the timer for two minutes” to solve minor problems during free playELL benchmark evidence can be gathered with one-on-one conversation in a play scenario like this: if a
child builds a tower, the teacher might ask questions like, “How could we make it taller?” or “What
happens if we add more blocks?”.

Lastly, when students are immersed in play that promotes higher-level thinking and inquiry, it usually
results in more on-task behaviour and focus. With students independently engaged and on task, you will have time for one-on-one pull-out for government assessments!

Tomorrow, before you grab a worksheet, grab a bag of flour from the kitchen and explore!

For further resources to support the facilitation of play, check out the podcast “Powerful Pedagogy” and the book “Schemas: A Practical Handbook” by Laura England. The AAC created resources to document observations and conversations.

For information regarding the Alberta Teacher’s Association’s stance on government testing, please read the December statement found here:
https://teachers.ab.ca/news/teachers-do-not-support-intrusive-and-unnecessary-testing

Janice Hagan, Kindergarten Teacher,
Calgary Catholic Schools

Originally published in the Alberta Assessment Consortium newsletter.