Play based learning meets Structured Literacy with Liz Lupton and Theresa Kinloch
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi and welcome to School Shorts with me Melissa Chan-Green, journalist and mum of two with a passion for education. Today we are talking a little around play-based learning. What is it? Is there a challenge in that there are different interpretations of what it is too? And how does that kind of learning look in terms of transition to school, those early school years? Today we are speaking with a representative from an ECE centre and also a primary school. We're speaking with Liz Lupton and we're speaking with Teresa Kinloch about the ways in which their ECE and Willow Park School have kind of dovetailed that play-based learning into the transition to school and what has that collaboration looked like for them.
Liz and Teresa, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks. Thank you. So I want to look first at collaboration, because for many parents and people in education, they will think, well, that's surely the ideal. What a great thing to be able to do for ECEs and schools to really have good communication there. And it is, but obviously there are challenges to that too. But how did the collaboration between your schools come about? Probably the fact you're in the same area would be one.
And for many years, we've had a connection with Willow Park School anyway. A lot of long-serving teachers in my centre. And so that has built over the years. But Teresa came along probably about... A long time ago, 12 years. Yeah, and came in for a chat to introduce herself with a real passion for building connection.
Yeah, so I was an early childhood teacher before I moved into primary. And what we know, those first five years are so important. And the early childhood teachers will have spent a lot of time with those children and they know them really well. We will always email parents and say, tell us about your child. But I think it's really valuable, if we can, to go into the centre, see the child in that environment where they feel safe and they feel settled with people that know them well.
How did the collaboration between this ECE centre and Willow Park School begin?
It's not always easy to do. We have a huge number of centres that feed into us, but we have centres that we get a lot of children from. So we've worked hard to get those connections going with those centres.
Yeah, that's such a good point to see them in an environment where they feel safe and comfortable because then if you observe them there and then you observe them at school, which is a huge change, and they are all of a sudden quite different to what you've observed elsewhere, you have that knowledge, right, which you might not otherwise if you had the opportunity to do that. Yeah. But as you say, there are so many centres and it would be impossible for all schools to do that with all centres.
Yes, but it is what I think is lovely is when I walk into your centre, it's almost like I'm a rock star. Everyone's like, Mrs. Canlop. The connection is there so you don't have to spend a long time in there for those children to feel they know you and that then passes on to the school as well because there's this pride of going to Willow Park School and that's where my siblings are and they make those connections.
But it also helps that Willow Park School are open to early learning centres going into the school. So we are invited to all their... Yeah, functions or when they have a dress-up day or something's going on in the school. But equally, we're welcome to go and just visit. So we have that open connection, which has helped heaps.
Can you tell us a little bit about your centre, your role there and what it looks like in terms of... I guess, diversity, the age ranges you have?
Okay, so we are a 50-place centre, and we have children from six months through to six, actually. We've got a few over five. We have a really diverse centre, so we have a lot of cultures within our centre. We also have a lot of neurodivergent children in our centre, but we have a very stable staff. So the majority of my staff have been there between 10 and 15 years. Hence the ease of which allowing that connection to happen and to work well because we know each other and we feel safe and it's a very high trust model between the school and the centre.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–2:32
2
How did the collaboration between this ECE centre and Willow Park School begin?
2:32–24:52
3
What does Liz’s early childhood centre population and staff structure look like?
24:52–29:48
4
How does Willow Park describe its student profile and approach to Year 0–1?
29:48–41:02
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from School Shorts
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