As you are all very aware now, our Early Years department moved from their location in Højbjerg to join our Dalgas campus in Aarhus C in August 2024. A modern, brand new, state of the art facility came with many new opportunities. Each classroom became a blank canvass for each teacher. How could they use the space to be inclusive, exciting, and conducive to learning, play and relaxation? How could the learning space be set up to include all learner preferences and meet all learner needs? Our aim in the Early Years has been to make creative, playful, engaging learning spaces where children’s voices guide our planning and practice.
This year, Mr Ryan and Mr Bettger took it one step further and used Motions Day as an opportnity to raise money through sponsorships. For each lap, members of our school community sponsored some money.
This is where Anne Van Dam from The Learning Square comes in.
As part of this undertaking, our Early Years and PYP4 department, together with the kindergarten staff from Billund International School and the International School Hellerup (both IB World Schools as well), took part in a professional development workshop lead by Anne Van Dam from The Learning Square.
The Learning Square, based in the Netherlands, facilitates transformational professional learning around play, learning environments, learner agency and inquiry in the early years. Anne set up The Learning Square, an independent consultancy firm on early childhood education, so that she could share the wealth of her experience, knowledge and passion that she has gained over the last 25 years. Her aim is to support educators to develop a shared pedagogy that is centred around young children. She has worked as an international educator all over the world, and has also been part of the PYP development team at the IB headquarters in The Hague. We were immensely privileged and honoured to have Anne visit us and share her knowledge with the team.
This all-day workshop was centred around creating responsive learning spaces, that holistically support all students to enter the learning environment. Together, we explored how documentation and observation can help us co-construct learning environments that respond to children’s interests, needs, and expressions. By engaging with open-ended materials and thoughtful provocations, we grew in our capacity to promote inquiry and agency in our classrooms, ensuring each student feels supported and inspired.
Thank you to Anne for sharing your amazing knowledge with us, and to the teachers from Billund and Hellerup. It was a fantastic opportunity for reflective practice not only with ourselves, but to also share that knowledge with other teachers from other IB international schools. This workshop reaffirmed how far we’ve come in shaping our new spaces and strengthened our commitment to child-centred, inquiry-driven learning.