As we have settled back into the neighbourhood and our new daily rhythm we have begun in earnest to look for opportunities to further provoke the children’s thinking and engagement with systems. As the educators we are providing experiences within our daily provocation sessions to observe and further document the children’s interactions with systems. We are currently looking for the richest pathways to follow that will enable meaningful explorations of this concept. We will also be looking for moments to connect to the curriculum and to provide authentic ways to encourage the burgeoning literacy and mathematical skills we are beginning to uncover on a daily basis.
The restaurant has been an obvious protagonist for uncovering systems and their purpose. In fact, for us as educators the restaurant enabled us to see the importance of children understanding the presence of systems within their world. The restaurant has opened a door and provided a lens for us to begin to see the existence of other systems within our learning environment. Some of the systems that we are now further provoking and documenting include the solar system and the universe, mapping as a system to record learning, systems of science including experimentation, systems of construction and the human brain, heart and body and how they are connected.
What has become apparent to us during this time of observation and documentation is the presence and importance of the systems that enable us to function successfully as a learning community. These include systems of collaboration and interdependent learning alongside the systems of our daily routine and organisation. One particular system we would like to highlight in this post is our evolving system of communication. We would like to remind you of the ongoing use of Seesaw as a way to share learning between home and school. As we shared in our last post, the Reader’s Notebook is now to stay at home and we ask that children upload a book response to Seesaw at least once per week. We will also be sharing our provocations at the beginning of the week to enable thinking and wonderings to be shared within your family and with us. At the end of the week we will share our reflections of the learning that took place. We will be trialling this system over the remainder of this term and into next term. Our aim with this is to try and replace the meaningful connections that were created often, on a daily basis in front of our documentation and communication board in the courtyard.