Georgia when explaining to Eddie about ‘Playing and Learning time’
‘it’s when you go and play and learn new things – we are learning about dinosaurs. Teacher S taught us’.
Here Georgia indicated that she understood one can learn about things and that factual knowledge can be imparted by someone else. She is the only child who used the word taught alongside the word learn at any part during the
observations.
6.2.3 Other uses of Learn
The remaining comments that used the word learn cannot be clearly related to learning a skill or about learning something, as it is unclear from the children’s language in which context, if any, they were using it. It may be in these
comments the children understood there is a word learn but did not have a secure enough understanding of the concept to use it accurately. Alternatively, they may, at that stage of their development, have understood it, but without further information from observations of actions or words an accurate analysis cannot be made.
When talking about reading with Eddie there did not appear to be an
understanding that learning to read was learning. In these pupil interviews the children brought their own reading books to the researcher who was with Eddie.
They read their books to him and were asked the question ‘How will Eddie know he is ready for a reading book?’ This was rephrased if it was felt that the
children needed help understanding the question to ‘When were you ready for a reading book?’ or ‘When were you ready to move colours?’ (reading scheme levels).
Only one child used the term learn in the reading activity which seems to be referring to the process of decoding. He made two comments relating to learning, ‘He needs to learn letters’ and the second a more general comment
‘Mummy helped me to learn all by myself’. The first comment indicates an understanding that Eddie will have to learn his letters before being able to read.
This could be related to the ‘know-how’ category in the sense that he will need to learn how to recognise the letters and to learn the sounds they make. The comments from the other children in this activity often showed a belief that they are naturally good readers and give no indication that they have gone through any process to get there.
Some terminology the children used implied that reading is not just something that simply happens, but you have to practise/get good/remember words, but generally they talk about moving through the coloured levels of books, or report that their teacher says they are good at reading.
This seems to back up the children’s understanding that skills have a beginning and an end; you generally do not learn to read in one day or a week.
6.3 Playing and Learning
It was important to find out if the school’s use of the term ‘playing and learning’
impacted on the understanding of the two as separate concepts. Previous observations seemed to show that, for some children at least, it was simply a phrase indicating that they could go to the areas in a free flow session. There were seven uses of ‘playing and learning’ by the children in activities where they
were not asked direct questions about whether Eddie was playing or learning. In all cases the children were talking about ‘Free Flow’ sessions in the areas of provision. As there were so few comments using the term it is difficult to make any generalisations about their understanding of the two separate concepts from this analysis.
By asking the children whether or not Eddie would be playing or learning in each area it was hoped to get some responses to see whether the children could differentiate and therefore illustrate an understanding of the concept of learning.
As has been described in all Strands, some children gave clear indications about their view of what constituted learning, but others were unable to do so.
Looking at the language children used in this activity, ten out of the thirteen children showed some understanding of the concept of play. In four instances that is the only word they use (from playing and learning), but it is distinct from the use of do. In the activity where the children were asked whether Eddie would be playing or learning in an area there were comments relating to playing with something, playing something and others that just used play as part of the answer without a clear link to the two other categories. Of the comments 27% (7 comments) related to the former where children described playing with
something, 46% (12 comments) described playing something (including games and ‘Batman’) and 27% were more general. In the same way that the more general learning comments cannot definitively be linked to an understanding of the concept learn, the same applies to the play comments. Without further
action or explanation on the part of the child it cannot definitively be stated the child making these comments understood a concept of play as being different from do or learn. One comment about painting indicates an interesting view point.