Intentional Play

“...Play based learning provides opportunities for children to actively and imaginatively engage with people, objects and the environment.  Symbolic representation is a critical aspect.   When playing, young learners may be organising, constructing, manipulating, pretending, exploring, investigating, creating, interacting, imagining, negotiating and making sense of their world…” (courtesy of Dept of Education, QLD).

This week our school hall became a NASA Astronaut Training Station. Year 1 students engaged in intentional play as they developed the skills, knowledge and understanding about what it would be like to be an astronaut and fly to the moon. They engaged in a number of learning experiences including, making food to take to space, visiting the moon using virtual reality, building rockets and stepping out onto the moon using greenscreen technology.  These learning experiences culminated in the students writing magnificent stories about traveling to the moon. They had been exploring a number of quality literature books but most notably ‘When you’re going to the Moon’.

Over the two days students used a number of provocations to actively engage in experiences where there were multiple opportunities for choice, wonder and excitement. The newly trained astronauts engaged in the skills of collaboration, negotiation, risk taking, celebrating and most of all participation, smiling and plenty of laughter.

We look forward to sharing their learning journey with the Year 1 parents on Monday afternoon.  However, if you would like to see the amazing NASA built rockets for yourself please visit our library.

Jeannine Ucdereli
Assistant Principal Learning and Teaching