Theorising play – masters unit
The purpose of this assignment is to help you understand the role of play in supporting and promoting children’s holistic development and learning.
- It requires you:
a) to document and analyse play observed in five selected vignettes of children’s play in different settings and contexts
b) suggest ideas to extend the children’s development and learning through play and to
c) write a 2000-word report on how play supports and promotes children’s holistic development and learning.
STEP 1 : Observe, analyse, and suggest ideas to extend children’s play, development, and learning using the Template provided.
1. Observe and document a selected child’s play from each of the five given vignettes. In vignettes where more than one child is playing, choose a focus child for your observation and give him or her a pseudonym.
In total, you need to have completed five video observations for five selected children. It is very important that you should make it clear which child you chose in your analysis and the report.
Make sure you capture details when writing the observations and avoid writing them like summaries of activities. Details of the video vignettes will be posted on the vUWS site under Assignment 3 folder. Use the Observation Template provided to write the observations on the vUWS site under Assignment 3 folder.
2. Analyse the type/s of play that the selected child was engaged in these five vignettes referring to the instructions in the template provided.
Support your analysis of each observation with related theory or theories, research literature and curriculum documents, for example, The Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009) or My Time, Our Place (2011). It is not enough to support your analysis with just the EYLF or MTOP outcomes.
Avoid making broad generalisations, biased personal opinions, and judgmental comments about the child’s development, play or learning in your analysis and adhere to professional and ethical standards.
Examples of how to document and analyse observations are available on the unit’s vUWS site See Annotated observation and Cases study exemplars in the assignment 3 folder.
You will also get hands on practice in documentation and interpretations in the tutorial classes. Also refer to Arthur et al. (2015) and tutorials discussions and notes on how to document and analyse play observations.
3. Suggest ideas or recommendations to extend the selected child’s development and learning observed in the five vignettes through play either in prior-to school or school setting. In total, provide recommendations for five selected children.
Your recommendations should be relevant to the contexts of the children’s play observed in the vignettes, individualised and connected with the analysis of play in section 2.
STEP 2
Write a 2000-word report ( 10% over the word count is acceptable, does not include word count from the observational templates and reference list).
Write a report on HOW play supported the selected children’s holistic development and learning.
Submit this report for marking through Turnitin.
WRITTEN REPORT
What content to include in each section?
Section 1: General introduction to play; Purpose of the report with specific objectives, i.e. what this report is going to cover, including its structure.
Section 2: In this section provide details on – the five selected children and their gender, your chosen method to document observations and why you chose it with support from literature; and the contexts, nature, and types of play observed.
Following this information, present a coherent discussion on how play supported the selected children’s development and learning.
This discussion should be based on the analysis of selected children’s play from all five vignettes with examples and with reference to those in the appendix. Support this discussion with relevant theories/ EYLF or MTOP outcomes and literature.
Do not include templates of observations in this section of the report. Five observation templates go into the Ap- pendix, attached to the written report. The information from all five templates should be used to write this section of the report.
Section 3: Provide five recommendations or ideas to extend the selected child’s or a group of children’s play/learning/ development. The recommendations provided should be specific and individualised to the selected children.
They should be relevant to the type of play and based on the analysis of developments and learning in the vignettes. They need to be practical and appropriate to the ages/stages of children’s development and learning currently observed in the vignettes.
Also, write general conclusions to the report based on what you found about the role of play in supporting children’s developments and learning. It is not enough to simply repeat the contents from introduction in this section.
PS: Keep to the word count specified for the report. Submit the completed report with the reference list, and all five Observation templates through Turnitin as one document.
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
– Demonstrate clear knowledge of documentation and analysis of play and recommendations to extend the five selected children’s play, development, and learning, adhering to professional and ethical standards.
– Support the documentation in templates and discussion in all sections of the report with a relevant theory or theories.
– Support the documentation in templates and discussion in all sections of the report with academic literature and EYLF/My Time, Our Place outcomes as appropriate.
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