The Elephas Approach
At Elephas Education, our educators aim to support every child’s learning and development by designing and implementing an educational program in partnership with children and families. Our programs focus on the children’s current knowledge, interests, abilities, ideas, development, and culture. Working in partnership with the Storypark Communication App and inspiration from The ROSE Way Planning Framework to offer a way to effectively engage in inquiry-based planning with the children.
The ROSE Way is a well-considered action-based research planning structure that inspires quality. Children’s individual learning and development is assessed as part of an ongoing cycle of observation, analysis of learning, documentation, planning, implementation, and reflection, ensuring our practice and environments are responsive to the interests, circumstances, needs and strengths of children and families.
Our educators support children to meet the aims and learning outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework, The Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guidelines, My Time Our Place Framework and work continuously towards quality improvement to exceed the National standards outlined in the National Quality Framework.
Inquiry Based Authentic Learning:
We deliver our programs through an inquiry-based approach, that focuses on investigation and problem-solving. Inquiry-based learning is different from traditional approaches because it reverses the order of learning. Instead of presenting information, or ‘the answer’, up-front, our educators start with a range of scenarios, questions, and challenges for children to navigate and research.
Our inquiry-based learning approach is a constructivist approach where the overall goal is for children to make meaning. By prioritising questions that require critical and creative thinking, children can develop their abilities to investigate, ask questions, interpret evidence, form explanations, and communicate outcomes.
The environment is recognised as the “Third Teacher” and is thoughtfully designed with open-ended materials, loose parts and provocations to provide endless possibilities for children’s play ideas. This model encourages creativity and self-expression, supports thinking and problem-solving, nurtures emerging interests, allows for active exploration and provides uncluttered meaningful learning spaces for children to engage collaboratively within. Educators integrate literacy and numeracy experiences in play, within studio routines and through spontaneous and intentional teaching experiences.
Planning For The Individual Child:
The Elephas Approach has three layers to ensure we are able to capture learning for the individual child:
Layer 1: Daily Learning Story:
As the children contribute to the experiences and provocations, their participation is documented in Storypark via the Daily Learning Story which is monitored using a detailed tracking system within Storypark. This means that it is easy to ensure all children are captured and removes the need for ‘focus children’. Rather you can capture the authentic learning relationships of the children as they engage and develop.
Layer 2: Individual Child & Group Observations:
The tracking system in Storypark accompanies the Individual Child and Group Observations made to create an ‘Image of the Child’ as a whole. This layer has a focus on each individual child’s milestones and learning development throughout the year and is then summarised at the end of each term to contribute each child’s learning to the term e-Book.
Layer 3: Summative Assessments:
The ‘Summative Assessment’ tool documents the individual journey of each child at two points over the year, mid-year and end of year. These are created in Storypark under STORIES to contribute to the child’s progress notes and developmental data.
