S7 E9 - Why We Should Keep the Early in Early Childhood

WEBVTT
00:00:48.690 --> 00:00:49.570
Hello, hello.
00:00:49.570 --> 00:00:58.210
Welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast recorded here in Pataway Burnie in Tasmania, the lands of the Palawa people.
00:00:58.210 --> 00:01:20.849
Today's episode has been prompted by an increase in the number of posts I'm seeing in Facebook groups from early years teachers, particularly Foundation teachers, concerned about the style of instruction they're being asked and required to use in their early years classrooms.
00:01:20.849 --> 00:01:34.930
It's a message that I have been thinking about and talking about for a number of years, and this episode is going to be a little different from the previous few that have been a bit challenging, shall I say?
00:01:34.930 --> 00:01:39.810
This one is about affirming what we know about the early years.
00:01:40.689 --> 00:01:57.969
If you've been sitting with an uneasy feeling about what the push towards rigid, intensive, highly explicit instruction all day looks like in your Foundation to 2 classroom, I think your instincts are good and the research backs you up.
00:01:57.969 --> 00:02:01.250
Today I'm going to talk you through why.
00:02:01.250 --> 00:02:05.730
Now let me start by saying what this episode is not about.
00:02:05.730 --> 00:02:09.650
This is not an argument against explicit teaching.
00:02:09.650 --> 00:02:12.530
Explicit teaching is essential.
00:02:12.530 --> 00:02:16.769
It is the foundation of effective literacy and numeracy instruction.
00:02:16.769 --> 00:02:36.530
What I want to push back on today is a particular version of explicit instruction, the scripted, tightly paced, fidelity-driven kind of explicit instruction being applied as the dominant model of teaching from the moment five-year-olds walk through the door to the moment they leave.
00:02:36.530 --> 00:02:43.969
That version of the day is hard to justify when we know what we know about how young children learn.
00:02:43.969 --> 00:02:53.170
And before you send me an email saying, "Jocelyn, stop being so sensationalist, that's not happening anywhere," I can assure you that it is.
00:02:53.170 --> 00:02:57.970
And this is what I'm seeing in anonymous posts from teachers.
00:02:57.970 --> 00:02:59.889
They are truly conflicted.
00:02:59.889 --> 00:03:12.050
They are not questioning the value of explicit teaching for the core instruction, they're asking, am I right or am I wrong in thinking that this is all too much?
00:03:12.449 --> 00:03:31.490
So when I talk about explicit teaching, I mean teacher-led, appropriately scaffolded instruction with clear modelling, guided practice, checking for understanding, and adjusting pace based on how students are actually responding, and this is what Rosenshine's principles describe.
00:03:31.490 --> 00:03:33.410
That's what evidence supports.
00:03:33.410 --> 00:03:51.250
This is different from scripted, tightly paced, fidelity-driven teaching across most of the day, where teacher responsiveness is squeezed out by pacing guides, and every single lesson in the school looks the same, regardless of who the teacher or the students are in the room.
00:03:51.250 --> 00:03:59.250
Now, explicit teaching done well can be active, dialogic, hands-on, and genuinely engaging.
00:03:59.250 --> 00:04:05.329
And those things, I don't think, sit in tension with explicit instruction.
00:04:05.329 --> 00:04:07.730
They're part of what makes it work.
00:04:08.449 --> 00:04:16.930
I'm speaking to you about this from experience, not from a theoretical discussion or a thinking about what might work.
00:04:16.930 --> 00:04:21.250
I've taught every year level in the primary school, including preschool.
00:04:21.250 --> 00:04:22.850
I've also run a creche.
00:04:22.850 --> 00:04:43.730
And one of the observations that I keep coming back to is that much of the pedagogical architecture of the heavily scripted, tightly managed, explicit instruction that we're seeing as the dominant model, all of this comes from secondary schools and is then just transferred into the primary setting.
00:04:43.730 --> 00:04:54.129
Now, there are elements of that that work beautifully, but sometimes it doesn't account for the students who are in the room and ask, is this appropriate?
00:04:54.129 --> 00:04:58.930
Because five and six-year-olds are not small 10-year-olds.
00:04:58.930 --> 00:05:01.810
10-year-olds are not small 15-year-olds.
00:05:01.810 --> 00:05:06.050
Each age group has particular characteristics and needs.
00:05:06.050 --> 00:05:11.569
And what works for Year 8 simply doesn't scale automatically down to Year 1.
00:05:11.569 --> 00:05:17.729
Now I am not talking about dumbing down instruction or expecting less in terms of content.
00:05:17.729 --> 00:05:18.689
Not at all.
00:05:18.689 --> 00:05:29.649
I'm saying that trying to teach Year 1 as if they're Year 6 is a recipe for overwhelm and stress for the students and for the teacher.
00:05:29.649 --> 00:05:45.089
When I was a principal in a small rural school, I made the decision that we would implement age-appropriate pedagogies right across the school from preschool to Year 6 within a strong, explicit approach to instruction.
00:05:45.329 --> 00:05:53.009
Now, age-appropriate pedagogies is a Queensland initiative to bring a range and balance of approaches to instruction.
00:05:53.009 --> 00:06:04.449
And before you groan at the use of the word balance, please know that this is not about saying, well, we'll do a little bit of this and we'll do a little bit of that and we won't do anything effectively.
00:06:04.449 --> 00:06:12.370
Within age-appropriate pedagogies, there are characteristics of instruction, and I'm going to share them with you briefly now.
00:06:12.610 --> 00:06:20.050
There is the characteristic of being active, which requires physical and embodied engagement across learning.
00:06:20.209 --> 00:06:24.689
There's agentic, which is about students having voice.
00:06:24.689 --> 00:06:32.930
This is not about saying the children will decide what they're learning next, but they have a voice in their learning.
00:06:32.930 --> 00:06:39.649
Their ideas and interests are considered when instruction is planned.
00:06:39.969 --> 00:06:45.250
There's the characteristic of being collaborative, which is social and co-constructed.
00:06:45.250 --> 00:06:48.610
Collaborative learning is about working together.
00:06:48.610 --> 00:06:57.649
Again, I'm not advocating for a pure inquiry discovery approach where a small group of children go and figure things out for themselves.
00:06:57.649 --> 00:07:01.089
But working together, that's a really good thing.
00:07:01.329 --> 00:07:04.050
There's the characteristic of being creative.
00:07:04.050 --> 00:07:08.370
This does not necessarily involve painting, but it might.
00:07:08.370 --> 00:07:19.409
Fundamentally, it's inviting the students to consider what if and encourage thinking to think about possibilities and make connections.
00:07:19.649 --> 00:07:24.209
There's being explicit, of course, which is what this podcast is all about.
00:07:24.689 --> 00:07:28.689
There's the characteristic of being language-rich and dialogic.
00:07:28.689 --> 00:07:33.569
We need to talk, we need to engage, we need to communicate.
00:07:33.810 --> 00:07:39.409
There's being learner-focused, recognising that different students have different needs.
00:07:39.409 --> 00:07:44.849
Now, when we talk about being data-driven, we are talking about being learner-focused.
00:07:44.849 --> 00:07:51.889
Again, it's not about that old idea of that student-centred learning puts them in the driver's seat.
00:07:51.889 --> 00:07:53.810
That's not what we're talking about.
00:07:54.050 --> 00:08:01.170
There's the characteristic of narrative and the role of story in learning, which is a powerful mechanism for engagement.
00:08:01.409 --> 00:08:02.849
This is one that I really like.
00:08:02.849 --> 00:08:04.529
It's being playful.
00:08:04.529 --> 00:08:09.729
Now, note it says playful, not playing.
00:08:09.729 --> 00:08:11.569
They're two different things.
00:08:11.569 --> 00:08:16.370
And when we are playful in the classroom, we're embracing our humanity.
00:08:16.370 --> 00:08:19.089
We can have a little joke, we can have a chuckle.
00:08:19.089 --> 00:08:25.089
We can be a little bit, and I'm going to say it, I'm going to say the F-word, a little bit fun.
00:08:25.089 --> 00:08:34.529
And that doesn't have to detract from the seriousness and the intentionality of the explicit teaching that we're working with.
00:08:34.769 --> 00:08:43.649
There's being responsive, which is about ensuring that learning is always appropriate for the students in front of us.
00:08:43.889 --> 00:08:45.810
And there's being scaffolded.
00:08:45.810 --> 00:08:54.370
So with modelling, encouraging, questioning, adding challenges, giving feedback, all of that is about being scaffolded.
00:08:54.610 --> 00:09:07.250
So while this approach, this AAP, age-appropriate pedagogies, was put together for the early years, in my school, we applied it across the school.
00:09:07.250 --> 00:09:15.970
What happened when we looked at instruction through the lens of these characteristics was genuinely wonderful.
00:09:15.970 --> 00:09:26.690
We saw higher levels of student engagement, visible improvement in students' ability to discuss their learning and retain content.
00:09:26.690 --> 00:09:37.730
And there's something that is a little bit harder to quantify, but just as important, which was the students feeling like they were an active part of the learning process.
00:09:37.730 --> 00:09:41.650
Learning wasn't just something done to them all day.
00:09:41.650 --> 00:09:45.090
They started to feel like it was done with them.
00:09:45.090 --> 00:09:55.009
And in a very short space of time, we saw improvements in the quality of student writing because they had ideas to discuss.
00:09:55.009 --> 00:09:58.610
So this was not just about it feels nice.
00:09:58.610 --> 00:10:03.090
This was absolutely related to academic improvement.
00:10:03.090 --> 00:10:20.210
And for us teachers, doing all of this helped us reconnect with what we loved about teaching in the first place, which was about helping the students enjoy learning, helping them be switched on and tuned in and proud of themselves.
00:10:20.210 --> 00:10:30.930
And all of this happened within a backward mapped, I do, we do, you do, knowledge-rich and teacher-led explicit approach to teaching and learning.
00:10:31.730 --> 00:10:33.570
So what does the research say?
00:10:33.570 --> 00:10:46.930
There's a body of research, and I will be sharing a reference list in the show notes of this episode, that tells us something important about how young children learn and what conditions support their learning.
00:10:46.930 --> 00:10:57.170
So, first let's define a term that keeps coming up in the research and the literature, which is executive function, often written as a capital E and F.
00:10:57.170 --> 00:11:05.810
Executive function refers to a cluster of cognitive skills that include attention, working memory, and inhibitory control.
00:11:05.810 --> 00:11:11.810
Working memory is that ability to hold information in your mind while you complete a task.
00:11:11.810 --> 00:11:23.090
Inhibitory control is the ability to stop an automatic response, like calling out an answer, in order to do something more adaptive, like raising your hand.
00:11:23.090 --> 00:11:25.970
These skills are not fixed traits.
00:11:25.970 --> 00:11:32.210
They develop over time, and the conditions we create in classrooms influence that development. I want to be really careful though, in terms of working memory, we cannot grow a students' working memory.
00:11:32.210 --> 00:11:43.970
We can help them use what they have more efficiently.
00:11:44.210 --> 00:11:58.850
And here's what the research tells us: children with stronger executive function skills tend to have better early academic outcomes in literacy, in maths, and in their general readiness to engage with the classroom.
00:11:58.850 --> 00:12:05.570
That relationship holds from preschool right through to upper primary and beyond.
00:12:05.970 --> 00:12:10.930
The second thing the research tells us is that these skills can be developed.
00:12:10.930 --> 00:12:16.530
They respond to experience, particularly things like inhibitory control.
00:12:16.530 --> 00:12:28.050
And one of the conditions that supports the development in this area, particularly for the youngest learners, is purposeful guided play opportunities.
00:12:28.050 --> 00:12:34.210
Not free play, not putting the blocks and the train set out to see what happens.
00:12:34.210 --> 00:12:47.250
But we're talking about purposeful, structured, teacher-scaffolded play with clear cognitive demands built in and not just as separate play time, but within instruction as well.
00:12:48.610 --> 00:12:53.170
The third thing here is that executive function is situational.
00:12:53.170 --> 00:12:55.009
It's not fixed.
00:12:55.009 --> 00:13:10.850
Observational research by McCoy and colleagues in 2022 found that the same children displayed markedly different levels of attention and inhibitory control across different classroom contexts during the same day.
00:13:10.850 --> 00:13:36.370
Now, this could have been because the day went on and the children became tired, but it also tells us that when we see dysregulation, when children can't focus, when they're fidgeting, when they're poking and annoying each other, it's worth asking whether that behaviour is telling us something about the contextual demands of that moment rather than just interpreting it as a characteristic of the child.
00:13:36.370 --> 00:14:00.210
And so before we start saying things like, that child is dysregulated and so can't learn in this way, we need to first be saying, we as the architects and the engineers of success have an opportunity to set the learning experience up so that children can engage and learn in this way.
00:14:00.210 --> 00:14:12.450
Play should be seen as a context for practicing self-regulation, not a guaranteed way to make self-regulation carry over to every part of the school day.
00:14:12.450 --> 00:14:14.850
And that's a really important distinction.
00:14:14.850 --> 00:14:20.210
I'm not arguing that play is a cure-all or should replace literacy in the day.
00:14:20.210 --> 00:14:38.530
I'm saying that the conditions of the school day, including where the children have opportunities for movement, interaction, and some degree of choice and voice, shape how well children can regulate themselves when we do ask for focused teacher-directed attention.
00:14:39.650 --> 00:14:54.690
We do not yet have strong direct studies that track children in a named, heavily scripted, tightly paced curriculum across most of the day while specifically measuring sustained attention, fatigue, and physiological stress.
00:14:54.690 --> 00:15:00.050
Most of the evidence here is observational or drawn from small comparison studies.
00:15:00.050 --> 00:15:04.530
But what the available evidence tells us is pretty consistent.
00:15:04.530 --> 00:15:10.530
Young children have limited capacity to sustain top-down control.
00:15:10.530 --> 00:15:15.410
And really, I think we know this just from spending time with them.
00:15:15.410 --> 00:15:27.650
When the day is dominated by long, tightly paced adult-directed segments, the cost may show up as reduced involvement, more dysregulation, or even stress.
00:15:27.650 --> 00:15:48.450
When the day includes recovery contexts built in so that movement, hands-on tasks, and guided interactions are a part of instruction, children may well be more able to engage during teacher-led learning, and that's coming from McCoy and colleagues from 2022.
00:15:49.170 --> 00:16:01.570
So this is all a plausible interpretation of the evidence, it's not a proven single mechanism to hack instruction, but it is consistent with what we know about development.
00:16:01.570 --> 00:16:17.730
I want to share just one study that I found super interesting and affirming because I'm someone who advocates for mat time and intentional teacher-led time in the preschool/kinder space, and it's called different things depending on where you live.
00:16:17.730 --> 00:16:34.370
So when I taught this age group here in Tasmania, half of my kinder or preschool students went to the Foundation year knowing the phoneme-grapheme correspondences, being able to recognise them for the alphabet, and being able to blend and segment at CVC level.
00:16:34.370 --> 00:16:45.810
Now, all of that was within a play-based approach for three days a week with the short mat time and short focus time for learning.
00:16:45.810 --> 00:16:47.890
But I want to be really clear, here in Tasmania, our students are older.
00:16:47.890 --> 00:16:55.330
You cannot go into Foundation until you've turned five by the first of January.
00:16:55.330 --> 00:17:03.810
So the students that I had in this kinder/ preschool cohort were four and a half when they entered the year level.
00:17:03.810 --> 00:17:08.769
And there were often five and five and a half in term three and four of that year.
00:17:08.769 --> 00:17:15.650
So I want to be really careful, I'm not advocating for that for every single state and territory in Australia.
00:17:15.650 --> 00:17:19.329
I'm just sharing with you what my own experience has been.
00:17:19.730 --> 00:17:27.410
But if we think about just teacher-led mat time, this paper has some really interesting contributions to make to our discussion.
00:17:27.410 --> 00:17:41.569
So Tominey and McClelland published a paper in 2011 where they described their research that involved a randomised controlled trial with 65 preschool children in Oregon in the United States.
00:17:41.569 --> 00:17:52.369
Half of the children participated in 16 small group playgroup sessions over eight weeks, twice a week of about 30 minutes long.
00:17:52.369 --> 00:17:54.450
So the games were simple, they were teacher-led and build around music, movement and rules, like a version of red light green light where the colours would change so that students had to override their automatic responses. Freeze dancing where they had to dance slowly to fast music or quickly to slow music.
00:17:54.450 --> 00:18:20.610
An orchestra game where children had to stop playing when the button moved and play when it was still.
00:18:20.610 --> 00:18:24.690
These were all simple games with no expensive resources.
00:18:24.690 --> 00:18:36.450
They were specifically designed to build attention, to encourage working memory use, and inhibited control in a playful social context.
00:18:36.450 --> 00:18:45.490
Now the overall findings were modest, and the sample of 65 children is relatively small, and we need to be clear about that.
00:18:45.490 --> 00:19:06.370
But the interesting bit here is that for the children who began the year with the lowest self-regulation scores, those who came into that experience the least school-ready, participation in the playgroup sessions predicted significantly greater gains in behavioural self-regulation.
00:19:06.370 --> 00:19:21.809
And this bit is also really interesting, that those children showed significantly greater gains, not performance over their peers, but gains from their starting point in letter and word identification at a very basic level.
00:19:21.809 --> 00:19:28.289
Now, they didn't get any additional literacy instruction, the games didn't have any letters or words in them at all.
00:19:28.289 --> 00:19:37.009
It's important to note that the researchers do not claim that improved executive functioning caused the literacy gain.
00:19:37.009 --> 00:19:46.769
What they suggest is that children who developed stronger self-regulation were better placed to benefit from what was already happening in the environment around them.
00:19:47.250 --> 00:19:53.250
So self-regulation appears to act as a kind of enabling condition for learning.
00:19:53.250 --> 00:19:57.490
It's not a direct cause of academic skill development.
00:19:57.490 --> 00:19:59.970
We cannot say that from the research.
00:19:59.970 --> 00:20:11.490
But the capacity to pay attention, practice holding information in your head, and inhibiting impulses may allow children to get more from good instruction.
00:20:11.490 --> 00:20:17.569
And this is a really meaningful distinction and one worth remembering when you're discussing this with colleagues.
00:20:18.610 --> 00:20:57.809
When I reflect personally on this paper and think about the students who I have taught and who I'm seeing in classrooms still today, what I think about is this, if all of the instruction we provide is a tightly controlled EDI style of instruction across the school day, the children who arrive at school with the greatest developmental needs, those who we're trying to enact the best games for, the ones who need playful, structured, socially engaging experiences, for them, this work is not a luxury.
00:20:57.809 --> 00:21:05.490
This work could actually be part of the active ingredients that supports their capability and capacity to learn.
00:21:05.490 --> 00:21:21.809
So when we fill every minute of the school day with tightly paced, compliance-heavy instruction, we might be inadvertently removing one of the conditions that would most likely help these students to be able to engage well.
00:21:23.250 --> 00:21:26.610
So let's talk about what kind of play we're talking about.
00:21:26.610 --> 00:21:32.930
Because research doesn't give a blanket endorsement of play in all its forms.
00:21:32.930 --> 00:21:48.930
The strongest evidence for the positive effects of play on executive function come from studies with preschool and kindergarten children, or Foundation children here in Australia, that consistently describe a particular kind of play.
00:21:48.930 --> 00:21:57.490
And it's worth mentioning that we don't have this evidence for Year 1 and 2, so we're talking specifically about preschool and Foundation.
00:21:57.490 --> 00:22:06.289
The features of the play that seemed to matter were role-based rules that required children to hold a framework in mind.
00:22:06.289 --> 00:22:12.769
Response inhibition where children had to stop an automatic behaviour and substitute a different one.
00:22:12.769 --> 00:22:20.450
Putting a little bit of desirable difficulty onto working memory loads so that the kids could practice holding things in mind.
00:22:20.450 --> 00:22:25.250
So rules were changed or complexity was increased over time.
00:22:25.250 --> 00:22:35.330
Switching between perspectives or rule sets and socially coordinated interactions with peer engagement, turn taking, and collaborative activity.
00:22:35.330 --> 00:22:41.170
Now, the circle time games in the Tominey and McClellan study had all of these features.
00:22:41.170 --> 00:22:49.970
And that's quite a different story from unstructured free play that doesn't have any clear cognitive demands or goals.
00:22:49.970 --> 00:22:58.049
So the active ingredients are the structure, the social coordination, and the adult scaffolding, not the playfulness alone.
00:22:58.049 --> 00:23:11.330
And that's quite affirming for me personally, I have to say, because thinking back to my time teaching kinder/ preschool, when we had the dramatic play, there were three dress-ups available.
00:23:11.330 --> 00:23:19.170
And those dress-ups were the ones that related to the dramatic play that that station was focused on.
00:23:19.170 --> 00:23:25.569
It wasn't get out the dress-up box, put a fairy costume on, and run around the room aimlessly.
00:23:25.569 --> 00:23:29.650
So the message here is about being purposeful.
00:23:30.210 --> 00:23:36.769
Free play alone is usually the least well-supported option for executive function gains.
00:23:36.769 --> 00:23:43.569
And the evidence does not support replacing explicit teaching with play.
00:23:43.569 --> 00:23:55.170
What it does support is purposeful, guided, adult-scaffolded interactions and experiences as part of a well-designed school day, particularly in the early years.
00:23:55.569 --> 00:24:07.730
So let's swing back now to age-appropriate pedagogies, that framework from the Queensland Department of Education that my school implemented as part of a trial when I worked in the Northern Territory.
00:24:07.730 --> 00:24:17.090
Now, it draws on a review of more than 100 research articles and 10 influential longitudinal studies into early childhood education.
00:24:17.090 --> 00:24:23.009
The key message from that framework is that learning in the early years needs range and balance.
00:24:23.009 --> 00:24:29.410
And what I love about this and that list of characteristics is that it's not a rejection of explicit teaching.
00:24:29.410 --> 00:24:39.490
It's also not saying that you could switch out explicit teaching with playful and agentic to teach literacy and you'll get the same outcomes.
00:24:39.490 --> 00:24:41.250
It's not what it's saying.
00:24:41.250 --> 00:24:51.170
What it is saying is that explicit teaching on its own, in one mode, for everything, all through the day, all through the year, is not sufficient.
00:24:51.170 --> 00:24:57.890
Effective instruction also reflects those other characteristics, particularly when it comes to the early years.
00:24:57.890 --> 00:25:02.289
And this is entirely compatible with explicit teaching.
00:25:02.289 --> 00:25:21.330
That is, if our version of explicit teaching is what is described by people like Anita Archer and Barack Rosenshine: teacher-led responsive that includes checking for understanding, scaffolding, breaking things down into small parts, and gradually releasing the heavy lifting that students do.
00:25:21.330 --> 00:25:33.650
In that context, something like the AAP framework gives us a practical lens for thinking about how we can engineer instruction for our students.
00:25:34.210 --> 00:25:37.330
So there's three principles that I'd like you to take away.
00:25:37.330 --> 00:25:40.370
The first is dose and recovery.
00:25:40.370 --> 00:25:50.210
We are 100% keeping our explicit teacher-led instruction in its current form in place, particularly for literacy and numeracy.
00:25:50.210 --> 00:25:52.049
That is a not negotiable.
00:25:52.049 --> 00:25:58.529
But within the explicit teaching, we can protect recovery and interactive windows across the day.
00:25:58.529 --> 00:26:18.049
So in science, HASS, creative arts, health, ask how the practice and thinking phases of those lessons can include movement, dialogue, manipulation of materials and student choice done in a way that is not a distraction from the learning at hand.
00:26:18.049 --> 00:26:27.730
If you're a Resource Room member and you use our Text-based Units, you'll see drama to engage is a step in just about every single unit.
00:26:27.730 --> 00:26:42.690
That is intentional and not because we love acting, it's because it allows for high engagement and helps to engineer that range and balance of tasks as part of an explicit unit of work.
00:26:43.809 --> 00:26:49.170
The second principle is that explicit can be active and really needs to be. Little people were not built to sit on the floor for 40 minutes, they were not built for passive seat work. They were not built to not move their bodies and not interact. Now I'm not saying teach your phonics via song and action, that's not what I'm saying, but within our teacher-led segments, we can include partner talk, choral responses, gestures, manipulatives, discussion, and particularly in the early years, the opportunity to stand, and sit, and move for a purpose. So if you've seen me teach a phonics lesson, you will see the students moving, from the floor to the desk, from the desk to the floor, all done in a really controlled way.
00:26:49.170 --> 00:27:40.289
Because little people were not made to sit still for extended periods of time.
00:27:40.930 --> 00:27:47.330
The third principle is to treat behaviour as potential data about context.
00:27:47.330 --> 00:28:02.289
So when the fidgets strike, before you go straight to thinking about a child's attentional difficulties or the class dynamics, consider whether that moment is telling you something about contextual demand.
00:28:02.289 --> 00:28:13.009
The message isn't to throw the explicit teaching out, it's to think, how can I tweak it here in a way that doesn't detract from the impact of the instruction.
00:28:13.009 --> 00:28:27.170
So if students are struggling to focus in tight explicit lessons after lunch, look at how we can maintain the teacher-led approach while making things more active, hands-on, dialogic, or playful.
00:28:27.170 --> 00:28:37.330
And remember that this is in service of student learning because fun without learning, without a permanent change to long-term memory, is entertainment.
00:28:37.330 --> 00:28:39.809
And that is not what we're going for here.
00:28:40.690 --> 00:28:46.450
One of the most useful things we can do as teachers of young children is embrace the power of "and".
00:28:46.450 --> 00:28:50.850
Explicit teaching and active engagement.
00:28:50.850 --> 00:28:54.370
Teacher-led and interactive.
00:28:54.370 --> 00:28:59.250
Structured and hands-on, and sometimes playful.
00:28:59.250 --> 00:29:03.650
The research does not support choosing one extreme over the other.
00:29:03.650 --> 00:29:17.170
It supports the thoughtful, intentional use of a range and balance of instructional characteristics within an overall commitment to purposeful, explicit instruction.
00:29:17.809 --> 00:29:27.330
If we embrace this approach of "and", we can step away from those polarising arguments about which type of instruction is better in all circumstances.
00:29:27.330 --> 00:29:32.049
That argument is not helpful and doesn't actually reflect what the research tells us.
00:29:32.049 --> 00:29:35.250
We're not watering down high expectations.
00:29:35.250 --> 00:29:37.970
We're applying professional knowledge.
00:29:37.970 --> 00:29:41.090
And that, my friends, is something worth celebrating.
00:29:41.410 --> 00:29:47.730
The final thing I want to say is what I hope happens as a result of teachers and leaders listening to this episode.
00:29:47.730 --> 00:29:55.410
What I don't want to happen is for teachers to share the episode and say, see, I told you we shouldn't be teaching explicitly in Foundation.
00:29:55.410 --> 00:30:03.090
I don't want this episode to be used as justification for moving away from explicit teaching outside literacy and numeracy.
00:30:03.090 --> 00:30:04.850
That is not what I'm saying.
00:30:04.850 --> 00:30:06.769
What I hope is this.
00:30:06.769 --> 00:30:24.049
If you've been worrying about the loss of early childhood practice in your early childhood classroom, that it's being replaced with heavily scripted, tightly controlled instruction across the day, and this doesn't feel right, I want you to feel affirmed.
00:30:24.049 --> 00:30:39.809
Just because explicit teaching walked into the door of our classroom and it was overdue, it doesn't mean that age-appropriate, active, interactive, hands-on learning experience should fly out the window.
00:30:39.809 --> 00:30:43.410
Alright, everyone, that's it from me for this episode.
00:30:43.410 --> 00:30:47.009
Thank you so much for being a part of the Structured Literacy Podcast.
00:30:47.009 --> 00:30:54.529
I want you to keep your eyes and ears out because next week there's an exciting announcement coming from us.
00:30:54.529 --> 00:30:57.090
So be sure to tune in so you don't miss it.
00:30:57.090 --> 00:30:59.410
Until then, happy teaching, everyone.
00:30:59.410 --> 00:31:00.210
Bye.