Interactive HITS video experiences – transcripts

An H5P interactive course presentation containing eight videos that cover different High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS). The information from the videos is to encourage you to consider how teachers can use interactions, planning and teaching strategies in an integrated way to support students’ learning in a play-based learning approach. Below are the transcripts for the videos on HITS.

HITS 1: Setting goals – transcript

Identify your goals for play and inquiry learning. Whether they are about extending your students’ play, deepening their learning, or both.

As you get to know your students’ interests and capabilities, you will be able to move from surface to deep learning, as well as provide challenges.

Knowing your goals, you will be able to assess students’ progress towards them, as well as knowing where to go next.

HITS 2: Structuring lessons – transcript

Think carefully about how you plan for and structure play-based and inquiry learning experiences. This includes organising play spaces according to the numbers of children you want to be involved.

• What resources will you need?
• Are you going to provide opportunities for students to access and select resources for themselves?
• What concepts and ideas do you want to be the focus of the experiences?
• How will you introduce these concepts and ideas and expand on them?

Be ready to identify spontaneously arising teaching opportunities that were not in your plan. Feel free to adapt your lesson structure on the spot if you think that will lead to further learning.

HITS 3: Explicit teaching – transcript

Teachers may take an explicit teaching role in play-based inquiry learning experiences.

Sometimes teachers may need to demonstrate or model play and social actions.

For example, negotiating roles or story lines in pretend play. Or introducing and exploring concepts around block play, such as planning constructions or the importance of strong foundations and balance to counter the effects of gravity.

HITS 4: Worked example – transcript

Teachers can present an example for students to work towards in their play-based an inquiry learning.

This can include the provision of examples, explanations, and demonstrations to scaffold your students’ play and inquiry processes as they work towards meeting a new challenge.

Effective use of worked examples means that students acquire new skills and develop independence in working on the task. Perhaps even extending the experience with their own ideas.

HITS 5: Collaborative learning – transcript

In setting up stimulating indoor and outdoor learning environments where students are encouraged to play, learn, and work together, collaborative learning is promoted. Students are encouraged and empowered to use their own sense of agency and voice to negotiate their own learning.

This strategy also links back to the basic premise of pretend play, involving students stepping in and out of negotiated roles and rules of play together, in imagined scenarios based on many real-life experiences.

With peers and adults, students connect cognitive understandings with associated emotions and re-imagine how this can be adapted and created into something new. This supports collaborative problem-solving, creating a product or understanding new knowledge.

HITS 6: Multiple exposures – transcript

One of the fundamental aspects of a play-based and inquiry learning approach is to encourage students and teachers to co-design, co-construct, and set up multiple and varied learning environments.

With the addition of space and opportunity, students are further encouraged and enabled to work through their understandings of new topics, concepts, and knowledge in these rich, self-constructed environments.

Students learn best when given ample time to be creative and imaginative in their thinking.

In providing the opportunity to explore knowledge and understandings through multiple and varied experiences, students have the ability to modify existing situations into new ways of thinking and doing. This facilitates the opportunity to move from superficial to deep levels of understanding in their learning.

HITS 7: Questioning – transcript

The use of authentic, open-ended questioning is used to ascertain students’ prior knowledge or their funds of knowledge. Students bring past knowledges to their learning experiences.

Rather than assuming what your students already know. It’s important to observe, assess, and analyse this information preferably in an informal formative way, through a range of individual or small group conversational discussions.

It’s also important to demonstrate to students that the questions you ask as the teacher, a genuinely seeking the students’ responses, not merely gathering data for later use. A sense of belonging and connection with the teacher and their peers can be further encouraged through this process of asking engaging questions.

HITS 9: Metacognitive strategies – transcript

Play-based and inquiry learning creates the optimal learning environment for students to re-examine what they already know, reflect on how they know it, and think about what else I would like to learn. They can also reflect on how they want to learn about a topic or a concept.

In this way, the students are self-reflecting on their learning and deeply thinking about the processes, that they have undertaken to problem-solve and creatively work through their own learning progress.

Student voice, and sense of agency come to the fore when they’re highly motivated to learn. Especially when the learning is based on their observed and discussed interests, capabilities, and funds of knowledge.

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Role of the Teacher. Video content and transcript

Introductory information on the screen

The short video begins with a Deakin University logo appearing on screen. Followed by the below Acknowledgement of Country:

We acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first sovereign people of this land. As a community of educators we recognise with deep respect their continuing connections to lands, waters, knowledges and cultures. In doing so we pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

An animated title screen appears reading:

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN PLAY. CHAPTER 2.

Narrated content

Then another animated title screen appears reading:

IMPROVING OUTCOMES. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN PLAY.

The video then has principle Jenny Deeble, speaking to camera with the following advice:

Foundation teachers have been telling me in the last few years, how much richer our oral program has become by using a play-based approach.

We’ve had a regular group of teachers who’ve all grown and worked together to develop a really strong program. They share resources, they share ideas, they come together to discuss what’s working, what’s not working. And they feel as if they’re getting a lot more experiences from the children and from there children express themselves through their written work and through their communication skills as well. And they’re seeing some real improvements in that area.

I think a play-based approach, especially with our inquiry and they are transdisciplinary it. So it’s not just working through ways to improve literacy skills, but we can incorporate a lot more of the STEM, lots of numeracy talk comes out of that.

We do maths talks through those. Getting children to use those experiences to develop their math concepts. As well is really a powerful tool to use, the teachers are finding really successful.

Then another animated title screen appears reading:

PLAY IN PRACTICE. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN PLAY.

The video then has Foundation teacher Marie Apostolou, speaking to camera with the following advice:

I always think about what I’m going to put out. For me today when I was working on the numeracy, we’ve been talking about tenths frames. And I actually had ten trains. But I wanted to see who was going to make that connection. Who was going to look at those ten trains and go… “Ah, that looks like our tenth frame.”

We can put our Unifix. We can match it with the cards when the numbers that were there.

So I got to sit around with that table and ask them questions:

If you’ve got three teddies in that tenth frame. How many are left?

Who can subitise? We’ve got three teddies here, I have four teddies here. Can you tell me how many teddies are sitting in that ten train and straight away.

That’s automatic assessment.

I go, yep. We’re subitising at the moment. They’re learning how to do it. They’re able to do it, or maybe they’re not able to do it. How can I help them?

Effective strategies for my classroom are about planning and having a reason for the things that you bring out for play-based learning. Really thinking about what is it you’re teaching in your classroom. Some of the activities I bring out, are to support things that we’ve taught and I want children to consolidate that concept.

Sometimes it’s a new concept that we’re learning. For example, pattern, something we’re learning at the moment. So this morning I had a few things out and while they were playing and we were talking about different things. It was in the cafe actually. I actually picked up an ice-cream and there were some colours on top and I said to them, does anyone say a pattern?

And so then I know what is a pattern? So I asked a few children. They were all jumping in and give me answers. Now we were all playing, but at that same time, I was assessing.

I was able to see. Who’s able to answer? Who’s able to tell me what a pattern is? Who’s able to show me and you’re not sure bet or a pattern is, you actually can’t show me.

Then one of the students actually got up and, even though she wasn’t able to explain what a pattern is, she was able to show me what a pattern is.

Then another animated title screen appears reading:

PLANNED CHOICES. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN PLAY.

The video then has Foundation teacher Marie Apostolou, speaking to camera with the following advice:

Even though as a teacher, you plan it, it’s structured, but, they get to choose what they want to do.

For example, with the writing on the whiteboard, the sounds. Now the two children actually that were doing the writing, I would’ve never thought that that would be something that they would choose. That they would actually choose to sit with a whiteboard and do sounds.

When y’know, there were blocks out. There were other things that they could’ve done. So, that was their choice. They wanted to do it.

Now at the moment, Foundation students are very wary about writing. They’re not sure, but putting the paper and pencil there, we actually had a little bit of a discussion about:

Why would I put a … ?

Why would I put paper and pencil out of the café?

They came up with, “Oh, we could write a menu Marie.” Or “the chef could write a recipe.”

And even children that are not writing as such, they were doing little scribbles. And they had their pictures and so they knew exactly what the list was. It’s giving them that choice and that opportunity where you know what? I don’t know how to write yet, but I’m still going to have a go at something that looks like a menu or a recipe. Having that choice there. And different choices.

They’re still learning, but they’ve got the choice to choose what they want to focus on.

Then another animated title screen appears reading:

FINDING THEIR INTERESTS. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN PLAY.

The video then has Foundation teacher Toby Marquette, speaking to camera with the following advice:

Seeing what they actually gravitate towards, especially first few weeks, when we’re just putting different things out and then just seeing what they go to and then seeing whether we can make that better. Different.

Did they like that? Did they go near that?

Sometimes they need a little bit of a push. They’ll, generally go to things that are quite familiar for them. For instance, like Lego or things that they really enjoy. Sometimes you need to sort of prompt them a little bit to get out of their comfort zone a little bit.

So yeah, we’ve tried to do a bit of social engineering in that way by pairing them up with different people, asking that they go and meet with different people. So therefore they have different interests. And that’s worked really well, actually.

Then another animated title screen appears reading:

OPEN ENDED AND EXPLICIT PLAY. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN PLAY.

The video then has Foundation teacher Toby Marquette, speaking to camera with the following advice:

We try to have a mixture of both. Sometimes the open-ended activities can actually become more explicit. We opened up our doors and we’re all together. So we will go around and we will explain how you might use the different things.

In some ways, it’s sort of open-ended and explicit. So the children can be explicit with what we’ve actually told them what to do. For those kids who maybe feel a little bit unsure about what to do or how to start something. And then we might stop them during a session. Show the kids what other kids have been doing.

“So, wow, look at this amazing thing that this child has done.”

It’s sort of, it’s open-ended, but then it is explicit. You are, sort of, showing them maybe a way that they hadn’t thought of before.

The video fades to a black screen with a Deakin University logo appearing on screen, then finishes with a fade to black screen.