Planning for Play Pedagogy should be responsive and intentional. Intentional planning comes from the practitioner looking at where the child is in their learning and and what aspects of the curriculum need to be taught and covered at this stage. The practitioner plans specific high quality teaching sessions or planed activities to ensure the learning needs are covered. This is the type of planning most teachers are used to and are more skilled at doing. This will account for the adult-led and adult-initiated learning where the adult has specific learning intentions for the experiences provided for the children.
Even for child-led learning, there is still an element of intentional planning. Provocations and contexts should be planned that will lead to high quality play experiences.
Teacher Planning
Planning for core learning such as literacy and numeracy would still be planned intentionally in advance. But where in the past forward plans would have reflected a whole terms worth of planning across all curricular areas. When following Play Pedagogy and having the mix of intentional and responsive planning. Some of our planning records would be updated retrospectively. It can be useful to have on overview of the Experiences and Outcomes that can be highlighted and annotated as the practitioner responds to the interests and needs of the children.
It is often useful, for weekly planners to take account of the 3 contexts of adult-led, adult-initiated and child-led learning, and to have space to record observations, taking into account the observation cycle. A blank template can be downloaded here.
