Leading-edge early education program landing at Airport Elementary
“What we know from research is [that] students learn best when they play. So the more play that we can give them in longer chunks of time, the deeper the learning they do,” said Pedersen-Skene. Photo: SD71
A brand-new early education program, or Primary Learning Community, is coming to Airport Elementary next Fall for kids in kindergarten through grade 3. This innovative new program caught the attention of many families, with over 60 participants attending the Zoom information session January 29th, and approximately 30 families submitting expression of interest forms so far through the month of February. The leading-edge class structure is designed to be a demonstration program, aiming to show educators throughout School District 71 and beyond what is possible with this unique style of blended learning environment.
Lisa Pedersen-Skene is SD71’s District Principal of Early Learning and Child Care. She said what makes this program unique is a combination of play-based and place-based learning, as well as the unusual format of one day learning from home, three days at school, and one day out in the community.
“It is a brand new concept to the valley,” she said, “and what we're really trying to do with the program is align all our early learning documents from the ministry, which is the early learning framework, learning in the primary years, the core competencies as well as our literacy and numeracy frameworks and our school district strategic plan.”
Pedersen-Skene said this work has been in progress for a long time, starting as many as ten years ago when a small group of principals, vice-principals and teachers got together to look at better ways to meet the needs of early learning students in play-based environments.
Pedersen-Skene said this work influenced the Primary Learning Community operating in the Qualicum school district, which is now in its fourth year.
“ It has been very successful. There was a smaller first cohort as people started to understand the program, and now the program is full and does have a wait list every year for students to attend it,” she remarked.
Pedersen-Skene said that what makes the new Primary Learning Community coming to Airport Elementary unique from the one at Qualicum is its weekly schedule. Every Tuesday-Thursday is spent at Airport Elementary, whether that learning is taking place indoors or on school grounds, while Mondays are spent learning from home, and Fridays are reserved for community outings.
One of the core tenets of the program is play-based learning, which Pedersen-Skene described as an educational approach that allows children to take an active role in shaping their own learning experience, while being guided or framed by teachers through “joint-play.”
“What we know from research is [that] students learn best when they play. So the more play that we can give them in longer chunks of time, the deeper the learning they do,” the early learning principal said. “When we talk about play we are not talking about free play. So it's not a free for all; it's a very structured environment where the children have choices of what they can do, explore, investigate, that is set up by the teacher and the teacher is an active participant in that play where they will be scaffolding learning, reviewing concepts, doing teaching, observing, questioning, et cetera. So it looks far different than what people would see as like a center time or choice time [as] it's called in our regular classrooms at school.”
Pedersen-Skene gave an example of play-based learning as a play area, such as wooden structures, that can be used with “dramatic play” to become anything from a science centre to a veterinary clinic. Through this play, the teacher can foster literacy and numeracy skills, making it interesting to the children by incorporating the things they find exciting.
“ It's just having the teacher come in, know where the children are in their learning, and then take literacy and numeracy concepts to help expand their knowledge and move them forward,” she said.
Another fundamental piece of the program is place-based learning, which Pedersen-Skene described.
“ Place-based learning recognizes that learning occurs within and beyond the school building. So this approach connects children to their local surroundings and communities,” she said, “enabling rich and meaningful opportunities to learn outdoors and through engagement with the community. It has also a strong underpinning of understanding of our local K’ómoks First Nation and the history that our community has. So that history through stories and teachings help[s] build a better understanding of the community that the students live in.”
A large part of this place-based focus of the program is the weekly community day, which Pedersen-Skene said could be anything from a collaboration with a local river restoration society, to visiting a business and seeing how it runs.
“The community day will be dependent on the teacher, but what I see it looking like is children having the opportunities to go to places over time. So we're seeing how places change. For instance, they may go to the Puntledge River in the fall, in the winter, in the spring and then early summer, and [look] at how the ecosystem changes during those times,” Pedersen-Skene said.
She said the key factor is that these are experiences that will be relevant throughout the children’s lives. She says that another core facet is the multi-age nature of the K-3 class, the only program in the district with a four grade span. Pedersen-Skene said this allows students to learn from observing and interacting with classmates of different ages and experience levels.
“And collaborating with each other, but yeah, sometimes it is just observing and watching what someone else does, and then, ‘hmm, I wonder if I can do that, or how can I do it differently,’ so it just builds, everything builds upon everything else,” she said.
Pedersen-Skene said that not only is this immersive learning environment beneficial to the students, it is experiential learning for the teachers as well.
“ My hope is that as we have educators from across the district come to this program, I hope that they will implement some of the play- and place-based pedagogies into their classrooms,” she said. “And then my goal would be, down the road, that we have a program like this in every school for students. That our classrooms shift so that we are really focused on play- and place-based teachings.”
According to Lisa Pedersen-Skene, Airport Elementary’s new Primary Learning Community class list should be finalized by the end of February, as a couple of spots are still open, with the traditional school district staffing process beginning in late April. The program is expected to begin with the new school year in September.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada. Reporting done in the Comox Valley is done in partnership with CVOX.