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For educators of children from 3-6 years of age beginning on February 10, 2025
Are you an advocate for children's right to learn playfully?
PLAYFUL LITERACIES: Honoring children's agency
Do you want to reflect on, review and share your practice with the aim of increasing children's playful engagement through multi-literacies?
Between the ages of 3 and 6, children embark on a remarkable journey; a transition from interacting primarily verbally with those around them to entering the world of communication through texts.
The whole basis of academic learning rests on how well they make this crucial transition.
In this course you will learn ways to guide them on this journey.
The power of a playful approach in developing learner agency, can change lives.
here's the thing:
Learn effective strategies for ensuring that multi-literacy learning is playful and creative?
Develop a fresh eye for noticing and honouring children’s initiatives?
Be ready to reorganize and make more accessible the texts, materials and tools in your learning spaces?
Gain more strategies to enhance the playful involvement of children with English as an additional language?
Critically reflect on ideas and learning designs presented in the workshop and contribute ideas of your own ?
Have reflected deeply about your beliefs about children and how you honour their agency?
Wouldn't you like to:
Meet your program leader, Dr. Jo Fahey
Dr. Jo Fahey has the lived experience of teaching and learning with young children for many years in both national and international settings.
For over 30 years, Jo has alternated between teaching in schools and preschools, working in the university sector, and leading professional learning for educators - particularly early years educators - in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific.
Jo has conducted extensive research leading to a doctoral dissertation. This, in turn, led to the publication of her book, ‘Ways to Learn Through Inquiry: Guiding Children to Deeper Understanding’, published in 2012 by the International Baccalaureate.
Jo's thirst for understanding how young children learn keeps her up-to-date with international and national developments in early childhood education.
Your Program Leader
- Children routinely show us in their play that they are ready for this. They have watched their significant adults engaging with texts.
- The portal to children’s belief in themselves, of course, is through us as educators. We believe them capable and competent of making this transition.
- We build this belief through our practice. Stimulated by rich experiences, children start to find their voice as readers and writers by being readers and writers. Choice is essential in developing their voice. We value and honour children’s intentions and approximations.
For children to be immersed and engaged in the process, they must learn playfully.
Help children build belief in themselves as readers and writers.
playful literacies: Honoring children's agency
Access to a private Facebook group so you can share ideas, ask questions and receive feedback from your peers. (Recommended but not required)
Group Forum
Journey through four unique self-paced video modules that will provide you with a strong foundational understanding of Playful Literacies. All modules include videos, photographs, practical tips and ideas, texts, and professional learning engagements for you to take part in, as well as reflection questions.
Video modules
Self-paced learning to enhance your
learning process.
THE COURSE INCLUDES
Weekly group coaching calls with Dr. Jo Fahey where you can ask questions and get feedback on your learning process.
These Zoom calls are optional, but will provide you with the opportunity to clarify understandings, share ideas, and collaborate with other participants.
See video clips of some of the children you met in the previous modules, when they were four years old. Only now they are eight.
It is a heart-warming reminder that the work and play we do in early childhood education, and the playful literacies that we foster, are a foundation for children to find joy and satisfaction in becoming literate.
Group Calls
Bonus Lesson
IS THIS RIGHT FOR ME?
In this course, educators of children aged 3-6 will learn:
Agency isn’t something that we bestow upon children from an all-powerful stance. It is something that we facilitate and nurture.
Within children there lies a well-spring of playfulness, creativity, knowledge and understanding.
How educators co-create environments that are conducive to discovering and fostering this well-spring and how to nurture children’s belief in themselves as independent, capable and competent learners.
Foster children's voice, choice and ownership for only €450
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YOUR INVESTMENT
The cost of the 4-week course is €450. Limited spaces are available.
Registering during the Early Bird period (before November 29, 2024) will save you €50 per participant.
*Groups of four or more participants from the same school receive a €75 discount per person.
what educators are saying
“Jo Fahey's Playful Literacies course will undoubtedly inspire you to rethink your approach to language and literacy development in an early childhood classroom.
Jo is so passionate in her practice and dedicated to supporting both children and educators alike in becoming excited about the journey young children take towards becoming readers and writers. I was most inspired by her ability to recognize and empower every child as a unique learner. I have been seeking strategies to incorporate literacy development in a play-based environment. This course exceeded my expectations, allowing me to stay true to my pedagogy and practice, while also supporting my children in building their foundation literacy skills.”
Sarah Scanzoni,
Hangzhou International School,CHINA
"My team and I thoroughly enjoyed this course, which became a real talking point around school. The fact that it's highly practical, yet also firmly based on theory, means that we felt confident in what we learned and could implement some changes right away, while also beginning a process of reflection to bring about more far-reaching changes to our practice. Jo went above and beyond each week in researching and responding to our questions and offering extra materials, and the rapport that we feel with her has been a significant factor in the success of the course."
Benjamin Pattenden,
Colegio Colombo Británico, Colombia
- Learn to foster young children’s reader and writer identities
- Understand the importance of mother tongue and translanguaging in the development of self-expression
- Explore how to set up learning environments and routines that promote children’s agency
- Discover innovative ways to use texts both to support curriculum and build on children’s own interests.
- See examples of how to guide young children’s inquiries into conventional reading and writing
- Examine a wealth of types of texts, from songbooks to maps, from environmental print to electronic texts
- See educators managing multi-faceted learning environments where the children don’t all have to be doing the same thing at the same time
- Connect with like-minded, professionals and share your ideas, opinions and experiences online.
Deepen your understanding of children's agency.
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You will observe how children can engage in multi-literacies including authoring books, the visual arts, socio-dramatic play, singing and composing, writing and reading authentic signs and messages, and more.
You will gain greater confidence in working with concepts and leading your students to construct their own conceptual understandings.
You will deepen your understanding of Playful Literacies and agency and reflect and act on your new insights in order to improve your practice.
Why enroll?
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, very relevant. This workshop is all about fostering children's voice, choice and ownership.
Examples of children’s agency are embedded in every lesson as it is part of the philosophy of the educators involved to nurture and facilitate this.
Throughout the workshop you will view a range of ways to support multiliteracies and promote translanguaging.
Jo has taught in international schools and continues to work extensively with IB schools.
- Module 1 Beliefs: Children establishing strong reader and writer identities explores young children’s belief in themselves, as authors and illustrators, as play-makers, readers, writers, composers of lyrics and singers.
- Module 2 Read-Alouds and Responses: Children developing agency and independence in a community of literacy learners looks at how texts that educators read aloud to their class can be a powerful stimulus for children’s own story-telling.
- Module 3 Transition to Conventional Reading: Authentic, meaningful and playful learning experiences focuses on strategies for supporting young children’s transition to conventional reading with an emphasis on the essential role of meaning.
- Module 4 Transition to Conventional Writing: Play and being playful as authentic contexts for writing is about playful ways that young children transition to conventional writing.
If you have completed Module 1 and do not love this course by the end of your first week, we will offer you a full refund - no questions asked.
The course is designed to be completed within four weeks, and you will have a few additional weeks of course access to finish up if needed.
At the end of this time the portal will be closed, you will however maintain access to the Forum and the Facebook group if you have joined.
If you are ready to help children to have their early experiences of literacy learning be guided in playful and creative ways, so that they will engage with the joy in this key foundational area of their education.. register now.
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Everything you need to let them learn in their own way and their own time.
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