An Environment that Promotes Play and Social Interactions REYN Training – Leiden - The...

An Environment that Promotes Play and Social Interactions

REYN Training – Leiden - The Netherlands, June 2015

Learning Objectives and Expected Outcomes

• To create an environment that supports language development through play.

• To provide adequate time for children to play and do

activities in small groups in learning centres.

• To explain how giving children the opportunity to make choices in play and activities builds language development as well as social emotional development.

Introduction

The emotional domain is the foundational to development. Children can only learn when they feel physically and emotionally safe, feel that they are part of the group, and feel supported through positive and consistent social interactions with key adults and with peers.

Children at this age develop and learn when they have room and time to play with friends, express themselves, and explore. They also acquire language because they want to communicate with the adults and children they engage with on a daily basis.

Language development and play

An environment that promotes play is one of the best environments for supporting children’s well-being and social emotional development.

Children are also developing language and communication skills while interacting with others in a variety of contexts. Therefore it is essential that the environment be arranged to encourage conversations and different types of play.


Play is a spontaneous and active process in which thinking, feeling, and doing can flourish. There are different aspects that are present in play to include: •Pleasurable•Active engagement of the participants•Intrinsic motivation (meaning that it is performed for no external goal or reward).•Freely chosen by the participants•Personally directed or co-directed by the participants•An attention to the means (process) rather than the end (product).



Roles of the educator in play:

•An observer

•A stage manager

•A co-player



• We can support children’s play by becoming co-players, guiding and role modelling when the play becomes frustrating for the child or when it is about to become abandoned for lack of knowledge or skill.

• We may pose questions that challenge children’s thinking about a situation or show how to use a prop in a different way.

• Other times we will notice that a child is reluctant to enter a play situation. Having a trusted adult involved, may help them feel more secure.



Videos: Playing House (https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos/page:5/sort:date/format:video ) and Robot Bread https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos/page:7/sort:date/format:video

Are the children: •actively engaged?•intrinsically motivated?•Did they chose where and how to play?•direct or co-direct the play?

•Also observe how the teacher has acted either as a stage manager or co-player in the videos.



Adding new or novel items to a center such as new dress up clothes to the house area, pictures of construction equipment to the block area, or fabric to paint on in the art area prompts questions and conversations.

Videos: Child Centred Classroom Croatia https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos/page:9/sort:date/format:video

and Child Centred Classroom Hungary https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos/page:9/sort:date/format:video

As you watch these videos, look for how the environment is arranged and equipped to places to encourage children to communicate with each other.


Language development in small groups

Videos: Circle Time https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos/page:6/sort:date/format:video

•Think about how much language are developing in these examples? How could the teacher have adapted this activity to also promote the children’s language development?

•Take an activity currently done as a whole group exercise and make it into a small group exercise that encourages children to speak more.


Playing with language

• Play with sounds and noises

• Play with linguistic systems such as those involving word meanings or grammatical constructions

• Play with rhymes and words


Playing with language

Exercise: Teach each other some new words using a familiar song that either rhymes, uses alliteration or repeats itself. Using the melody of that song, create actions for it, or new words that will also support the language development in the new language.


Scripted dramatic play

Dramatic play in the new language is often above the level of production of new language speakers. Scripting their play by introducing the roles and props as well as giving background in a demonstration prior to the play activity can help those who are not yet producing the new language on their own to be involved.

Exercise: Choose a story that children may know in the first language(s) that is also available in the new language (or translate a familiar story into the new language). Think of props/ puppets for the children to add to the story box.


Children as helpers

Support for new language speakers can also be provided in small group activities by introducing strategies to the children who speak the language that help them play with others who do not speak their language.

These strategies include:

•Initiation: Children can be coached to approach other children, establish eye contact, and ask to play with them or with a particular toy. If their approach is not responded to, coach them to reinitiate.

•Request clarification: Children can be coached to request clarification of a response by another child if it is not understood by them.

•Expansion: Children can be coached to repeat a child’s attempt to communicate by changing it, expanding upon it or using nonverbal signs if they do not understand what was said (Tabors, 2008).


Strategies for Sustaining Conversations

Language Stimulation Techniques

Technique Description

Waiting The adult uses a slow pace during conversation; actively listens to children when talking and does not dominate the conversation.

Pausing The adult pauses expectantly and frequently during interactions with children to encourage their turn-taking and active participation.

Confirming The adult responds to all child utterances by confirming understanding of the child’s intentions and not ignore the child’s communicative initiative.

Imitating The adult initiates and repeats what the child says more or less exactly. Example: Child: I did the puzzle. Adult: You did the puzzle.

Extending/Expanding

The adult repeats what the child says and adds a small amount of syntactic or semantic information.

Modeling desired response

The adults demonstrates children a sound, a word or language form that they do not yet produce on their own in the conversation. Modeling can also be used to demonstrate to children what it is they are expected to say or do.

Labeling The adult provides the labels for familiar and unfamiliar actions, objects, or abstractions (e.g. feelings). Uses pictures or actual items.

Scripting The adult provides a routine to the child for representing an activity (e.g. First you go up to the counter. Then you say, “I want a hamburger.”) and engages the child in known routines (e.g. “Now it is circle time. What do we do first?”

Narrating The adult talks about everything that the child is doing as if you were describing it to someone who is not the room to see it. The goal of narration is to pair the child’s play and actions with the appropriate language.

Strategies for Sustaining Conversations

Video: Watch the video, Language for Learning: Infants and Toddlers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DPhIQh91Mw

What strategies do you see the teachers using?

Waiting, pausing, confirming, imitating, extending/expanding, labeling, narrating, modeling desired response

Open-ended questions

Questions that have more than one right answer, or ones that can be answered in many ways are called open ended questions. Open-ended questions open up conversations.

Close-ended questions usually limit conversation to a one or two word response, and sometimes they end the conversation.


Types of open ended questions include: •Making predictions – What do you think will happen if….? What might we see, hear at … ???

•Stretching thinking – What would happen if there were no….. or if everyone….?

•Assessing feelings – How would you feel if ……..?

•Thinking about similarities and differences

•Applying knowledge to solve a problem – What could you do to….?

•Evaluating – What made you decide…. ? Why do you agree or not agree with ….? What would you have done differently?


Classifying: •Which of these go together? Why? Can any of these be put together? •What could you call these groups?•What are the characteristics of all the things in this group?•How could your rearrange….? Can you find another way to ….?

Describing:•What is ….. like?•What can you see? What did you notice about …..?•How would you describe…. ?


Explaining•How do you …..? Why do you think….? What do you think caused this?•What might happen if …? Why do you think so?•Can you think of another reason for…?

Generalizing•What is the same or true about all of these?•What can you tell me/us about?•What have you learned/found out about….? What does this mean?

Inferring•What do you think might be happening here? Why?•What do you think might cause this? Why do you think this happened?•Can you think of a different idea?

Questions for Different Language Levels

Write 2 questions for each child:•a child who is the silent, non-verbal stage of speaking a new language •A child who is starting to go public with the new language•A child who is productive in the new language

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