{"id":3350,"date":"2021-11-02T13:24:38","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T13:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/fa\/falkirkearlyyears\/?p=3350"},"modified":"2021-11-02T13:27:22","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T13:27:22","slug":"play-is-the-way-lets-talk-about-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/fa\/falkirkearlyyears\/play-is-the-way-lets-talk-about-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Play is the Way – Let’s talk about literacy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In Falkirk, we know that play really is the way for our young children.\u00a0 By providing lots of opportunities for free play in high quality environments and adopting a playful approach to teaching we inspire, and motivate, our children in their learning each and every day.<\/h4>\n

Sharing our rationale with families and helping them understand how we use play to support and challenge children to develop a wide range of skills and knowledge is an important part of our play is the way journey.\u00a0 This blog post from Maddiston Primary School’s P1 staff team shows how they recently helped their families understand how their team’s playful approaches to teaching and learning are supporting children’s early literacy development.<\/span><\/h4>\n
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P1 staff team at Maddiston Primary School Claire McGlynn (HT), Diane Russell (PT), Debbie Brown, Helen Chebe and Penny Byrne (CTs),Stacey Anderson (EYO)\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At Maddiston Primary School, we consider sharing the children’s learning with our families to be of utmost importance in supporting children’s holistic development.\u00a0 This is even more important given the current climate with Covid-19.\u00a0 Normally, at this point in the school year, we invite the families of our primary one pupils into school to be with the children in the class environment and to share an aspect of their learning in literacy.\u00a0 With current restrictions, this was not an option so the team decided to create a digital workshop to allow parents a sesne of what the children’s literacy learning looks like in primary one.<\/h3>\n

Play and playful learning is integral to our practice in P1, and it was important for us that this was the message communicated to parents.\u00a0 We wanted to show that, although there are teacher led targets and an order of progression, the children are encountering rich, foundational literacy experiences daily through the play environment. The team also wanted to emphasise the breadth of experiences we aim to offer in a variety of multisensory ways, so parents can then better understand how to support their children at home.<\/h3>\n

From the workshop, we have had really positive feedback from our families and have seen the benefits of sharing the learning in this way.\u00a0 Families report that they are able to sit and talk with their child about their \u00a0learning.\u00a0 In comparison to the traditional approach of welcoming families into the setting, the team felt enabled to capture more of the children\u2019s learning and explain to families the rationale behind a play pedagogy.\u00a0 Whilst we recognise that this could have been more explicit at some points in the digital workshop, we are confident that families can see what literacy learning looks like in P1 and that we are conveying the message that \u2018Play is the Way\u2019.<\/h3>\n

Click here to check out Maddiston Primary School’s brilliant P1 Literacy workshop for families.<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\n

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To read more about promoting early literacy through play, Falkirk practitioners can check out the following materials on the Falkirk Early Learning Glow SharePoint pages by clicking on the links below:<\/p>\n