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Learning through play
Educators discuss the benefits of play-based learning, the model which will be used for junior kindergarten

Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, May 7, 2014

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
As the territorial government prepares to roll out play-based junior kindergarten next year, early childhood educators in the North are preparing for the switch in the teaching model.

Shifting from a traditional curriculum-based setting where students are told what they have to learn and success based on test scores, the new junior kindergarten will match other kindergarten classes across the NWT with the play-based approach, which was piloted last year in existing kindergarten programs in the NWT and made official this year.

"I think certainly, the goal is to move toward a play-based approach while retaining the purposeful inclusion of cultures here - Dene and Inuit - and trying to bring together the learning expectations in the current kindergarten and primary programs and interpret them and re-frame them in a play-based approach," said Dr. Jane Bertrand, a Toronto-based specialist in play-based education.

Bertrand was brought to Yellowknife this week by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to speak to early childhood educators and government officials about play-based learning.

"Play-based kindergarten, I think, provides children with a holistic approach to education that builds real important foundational capacities, particularly around self-regulation - being able to regulate emotions, manage behavior, and extend attention - those are really learning to learn skills," Bertrand told Yellowknifer after a presentation at the Explorer Inn on Tuesday.

"I think well-designed play environments involve learning to learn and that's what kids need when they enter Grade 1 or Grade 2."

Bertrand said teachers and parents occasionally consider play to be simple roughhousing that riles the children up, but she said it is a critical part of early development.

"There is no other reason that scientists have identified (for play) except that it helps us learn how to get along with others," she said.

"In rough and tumble play, there's a back and forth, a give and take where children are able to give feedback to each other."

At Range Lake North school, one of the schools where play-based education was piloted in the kindergarten program, students aged five and six were working in groups or alone mixing paint colours to attempt to make the primary colours - red, blue and yellow - Tuesday following Bertrand's presentation.

"They won't be able to make red (or the other primary colours), but they don't know that yet," said teacher Kari Anderson.

"I might say at the end of the week, 'have you noticed we haven't been able to make red, blue or yellow?' and then we'll talk about why that is."

Anderson says she sees herself more as a coach than a direct teacher with the play-based approach, and transitioning into that role was a challenge at first.

"It took me from September until Christmas to figure it all out. I was kind of nervous because if I'm not telling them what to learn, then how will they learn?"­

Play-based junior kindergarten will roll out to the NWT's 29 smallest communities next year (10 of which currently have no early childhood services), coming to regional centres the year after and finally in Yellowknife three years from now - all with a price tag of $7.2 million.

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