December 16th, 2015

Looking back to September, it seems that we only just welcomed everyone back to school.  Time certainly does fly when you are having fun!

Learning through play is an effective strategy used from the early years of childhood.  The staff and students have been learning through engaging experiences in their programs.  They have built new skills and extended their learning in a variety of areas across the curriculum.  At the same time, we continue to encourage student to take risks in the learning process and to use the descriptive feedback they receive from their teachers and their peers to explore ways to improve on their comprehension and their performance.

We know that learning is a process; not simply the end product.  It’s the journey towards the goal.  It involves struggles and success.  And, often, when we do the most learning, we find we have also done the most work during the process.  Often students see feedback as negative criticism or feel that they are done and are reluctant to go back to review and revise their work.

I wonder what the learning will look like over our holidays as our students explore and use their new treasures.  What strategies will we see our students using to problem solve?  Think critically about a challenge? To Communicate, Create, Design, Understand?  How will they take risks, or use feedback. Will they demonstrate the stamina to stick with a tricky task?  The learning context may be different, but the learning process continues.

If the task is engaging and meets the child’s interests, it is quite amazing how long and how hard they will try to master the skill connected with the toy or the experience.  Critical inquiry and thinking skills along with the determination to persevere while they learn something new are essential to the learning process; especially within the school environment.  Whatever the context, learning can be both fun and rewarding!

We hope that all of our students enjoy many hours of fun over the holidays as they learn something new through their play.  The staff of John Darling would like to extend our best wishes for a safe and happy holiday to all of our JD Families and a prosperous New Year!

 

Sincerely,

Gillian McKenzie