Running a play and provision-based environment can sometimes feel like a lot of planning and can get a bit overwhelming. In comes incidental learning. We at TPPT like to call these ‘sneaky’ learning opportunities! Essentially, they are ways in which to utilise your environment that allow for learning to happen continuously even when you’re not there. Children can revisit and review and embed this learning over time.
Let’s take a look at 3 easy examples you can embed into your classroom practice to keep that sneaky learning going!
Ten frames
Ah, the humble ten frame. Very powerful for self-registration to deepen mathematical understanding with a real-life context. This could be children’s pictures with velcro which inevitably develops discussion around who is absent, meaning there’s only 28 children in today as 2 are not in school and so on. You could organise water bottles into ten frames on the sink or in the tray. Your block area can be organised into ten frames or taking it a step further for KS1, arrays.
Weather charts
One thing about children is that they LOVE collecting data! Teaching a short input on how to create a pictogram will pay off in the long run as they will collect data about how many rainy days there were this week or month, how much rainfall, the difference across seasons and so on. Why not use our calendars, weather diaries and tally chart templates for this? Of course, pictograms and collecting data can transfer to many other topics, such as how many children ate an apple for snack today, how they got to school… the opportunities and the learning potential is endless!
Resource shadowing
Such an easy hack for continued learning whilst playing and tidying. Shadowing is essentially sticking a ‘shadow’ of the resource onto the shelf by either photocopying the physical object or cutting black paper in its 2D form onto the base of the shelf. The benefit of this is recognition of number or shape, habitat of animals or spatial awareness. Use this in your block area by arranging your wooden blocks by length, arrays as previously mentioned or shape. You can write on the sticky back plastic in chalk pen for it to be durable but also wipe off when you want to change it. This can be adapted depending on year group or time of year. Take your maths area – you can shadow your numicon either by number order or into number bonds to 10. Listen into the discussions as the children tidy or play and you will see why this is valuable!
Which incidental learning opportunity will you try in your classroom?
