Introduction
This assignment presents a fortnight learning program for the Banksia Room, a kindergarten room of 22 children aged 4-5 years within a long day care service in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. The program is planned under Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia V2.0 (Australian Government Department of Education [AGDE], 2022), which guides curriculum for this age group in every Australian jurisdiction. The assignment first establishes the regulatory parameters that shape the room’s staffing and environment, then develops a pedagogical rationale grounded in play-based learning and intentionality. The program itself is presented in Table 1, and Figure 1 shows the planning cycle through which observation becomes assessment and re-planning. Strategies for family partnership and culturally responsive practice, including the respectful embedding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, are then described, before Table 2 maps the program to the National Quality Standard (NQS). A critical reflection identifies limitations and priorities for the next cycle.
Service Context and Regulatory Parameters
The service operates under the National Quality Framework administered by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA, 2023) and must satisfy regulations 123 and 107 of the Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011, which govern educator-to-child ratios and indoor space. Two compliance calculations framed the program’s design. First, the minimum staffing requirement for children over 36 months of age was confirmed:
Minimum educators required = number of children / regulated ratio = 22 / 11 = 2 educators.
The room is staffed above this minimum with one early childhood teacher and two diploma-qualified educators, giving an operating ratio of 22 / 3 = 7.3 children per educator. This surplus capacity is not incidental: it is what makes small-group intentional teaching and sustained one-to-one conversation feasible. Second, unencumbered indoor space was verified against the regulatory minimum of 3.25 square metres per child: required space = 22 x 3.25 = 71.5 square metres, against 84 square metres available. The remaining 12.5 square metres has been deliberately allocated to a standing construction zone that can stay assembled across the fortnight, allowing projects to be revisited and extended rather than packed away each afternoon.
Rationale: Play-Based Pedagogy and Intentionality
The EYLF V2.0 positions play-based learning as the central context through which young children organise and make sense of their worlds, describing play as a process in which children explore, experiment, solve problems and represent ideas (AGDE, 2022). From a cultural-historical perspective, imaginative play is the leading activity of the preschool years: within pretend scenarios, 4-5 year olds operate ahead of their everyday competence, regulating their behaviour to fit roles and rules they have set themselves (Fleer, 2021). Planning for this age group therefore begins with rich, open-ended play contexts rather than isolated skill instruction, and builds outward from children’s observed strengths and interests (Arthur et al., 2021).
Play-based pedagogy does not mean educator passivity. V2.0 deliberately broadened the earlier concept of intentional teaching to intentionality, recognising that deliberate, purposeful and thoughtful action belongs to children as well as educators (AGDE, 2022). Edwards (2017) argues that play and intentional teaching are complementary rather than opposed, and Grieshaber et al. (2021) conclude from a scoping review that intentional teaching is most defensible when it is embedded within play itself rather than delivered as separate instruction. Accordingly, every experience in Table 1 names a specific teaching strategy, such as sustained shared thinking, revoicing, provocations, co-researching or modelled writing, so that adult moves are planned and accountable rather than left to chance.
The stakes of achieving this balance are visible in Australian population data. The 2021 Australian Early Development Census found that 22.0 per cent of children commenced school developmentally vulnerable on one or more domains, the first increase recorded since the census began (Commonwealth of Australia, 2022). The tempting response, pushing formal academic instruction downward into the kindergarten year, is precisely what Barblett et al. (2016) warn against in documenting the erosion of play under schoolification pressure. A program that is playful in form but intentional in design offers the evidence-based middle path for the year before school.
The Fortnight Program
The program is organised around ten recurring experiences rather than a larger number of one-off daily activities, because 4-5 year olds deepen learning by returning to the same materials and ideas with growing complexity (Arthur et al., 2021). The experiences span all five EYLF learning outcomes, balance child-initiated and educator-initiated learning, and deliberately leave Week 2 partially open so that it can be re-planned from Week 1 evidence, as the planning cycle in Figure 1 requires. As shown in Table 1, each experience is mapped to a primary outcome, an intentional teaching strategy and a nominated form of assessment evidence, making the link between what educators do and what they claim children are learning explicit and auditable.
Table 1: Fortnight learning program for the Banksia Room, mapped to EYLF V2.0 outcomes, intentional teaching strategies and assessment evidence
| Learning experience (placement) | Primary EYLF V2.0 outcome | Intentional teaching strategy | Assessment evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morning yarning circle with co-created Acknowledgement of Country (daily, Weeks 1-2) | Outcome 2: Connected with and contribute to their world | Modelling respectful protocol; open-ended questioning | Anecdotal records of children’s contributions |
| Family story baskets: photographs and objects from home (Week 1) | Outcome 1: Strong sense of identity | Revoicing children’s narratives; scaffolded small-group talk | Learning stories linked to identity indicators |
| Loose parts construction zone: timber offcuts, crates, fabric (standing project) | Outcome 4: Confident and involved learners | Provocations; sustained shared thinking | Photo sequences with educator analysis |
| Bush tucker garden: planting warrigal greens and river mint (Week 1, tended through Week 2) | Outcome 2: Connected with and contribute to their world | Co-researching plant care; introducing Woi-wurrung plant names with community guidance | Garden floorbook entries; time samples |
| Water investigation table: sink and float testing (Week 1) | Outcome 4: Confident and involved learners | Predict, test, explain questioning cycle | Annotated prediction chart; work samples |
| Dramatic play: community health clinic (Week 2) | Outcome 3: Strong sense of wellbeing | Role modelling; introducing authentic props and vocabulary | Running records of role negotiation |
| Pattern and counting walk with natural materials (Week 2) | Outcome 5: Effective communicators | Mathematising everyday talk; parallel modelling | Numeracy checklist supported by anecdotes |
| Cooperative outdoor games with negotiated rules (daily) | Outcome 3: Strong sense of wellbeing | Coaching self-regulation scripts; guided turn-taking | Event samples of peer negotiation |
| Dreaming stories from community-authorised published sources (Week 2) | Outcome 2: Connected with and contribute to their world | Dialogic reading; respectful sourcing protocols | Children’s retell drawings with transcribed comments |
| Post office mark-making area with environmental print (Weeks 1-2) | Outcome 5: Effective communicators | Modelled writing; providing authentic audiences | Dated writing samples in portfolios |
Assessment and the Planning Cycle
Figure 1 illustrates the cycle that drives the program: educators observe children in play, assess those observations against the EYLF outcomes, plan responsive experiences, implement them, and reflect before the cycle turns again (AGDE, 2022).
Assessment across the fortnight is formative and embedded in ordinary practice rather than conducted as separate testing. The methods nominated in Table 1, including anecdotal records, learning stories, running records, event samples, annotated work samples and photo sequences, were selected to match the kind of learning each experience makes visible (Arthur et al., 2021). Raw observations only become assessment when they are analysed: each record is annotated against outcome indicators, noting what the child can already do, what this suggests about their current working theories, and what a worthwhile next challenge would be. At the close of the fortnight the teaching team holds a planning meeting in which evidence for every child is summarised and the following fortnight is planned from that evidence. This discipline guards against the common failure mode in which observations accumulate in portfolios without ever influencing the program offered (ACECQA, 2023).
Family Partnership and Cultural Responsiveness
Partnerships with families
The EYLF names partnerships with families as a core principle, grounded in the recognition that families are children’s first and most influential teachers (AGDE, 2022). Genuine partnership is mutual and reciprocal: information, expertise and decision-making flow in both directions, rather than the service simply reporting outcomes to families (Rouse & O’Brien, 2017). The program operationalises this in three ways. The fortnight plan is displayed in the room and shared digitally in plain language, with an explicit invitation for families to contribute ideas, materials and expertise. The family story baskets experience brings family voices directly into the curriculum as children share photographs and objects from home. Finally, the Week 2 re-planning meeting reviews family comments alongside educator observations, so that family input demonstrably shapes the program rather than decorating it.
Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives
V2.0 strengthens the expectation that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives are embedded in everyday practice through the principle of cultural responsiveness, not confined to celebration days (AGDE, 2022). In the Banksia Room this begins with place: the service stands on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country, and the daily Acknowledgement of Country is co-created with the children in the morning yarning circle so that it is understood rather than recited. The bush tucker garden introduces local plants and, with community guidance, their Woi-wurrung names, while Dreaming stories are drawn only from published sources authorised by their community custodians and are never invented or adapted by educators. Cultural safety requires that such decisions are made with, not merely about, Aboriginal people (Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care [SNAICC], 2019), so the service is building an ongoing relationship with local Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung organisations rather than treating consultation as a single transaction. The whole-of-service commitments of a Narragunnawali Reconciliation Action Plan provide the structure for sustaining this work well beyond one fortnight (Reconciliation Australia, 2021).
Alignment with the National Quality Standard
The NQS provides the quality lens against which the program will ultimately be assessed and rated. Table 2 maps program elements to the seven quality areas, demonstrating that the fortnight plan is not only pedagogically defensible but also auditable: each claim is paired with evidence an authorised officer could inspect (ACECQA, 2023).
Table 2: Program alignment with the National Quality Standard
| Quality area | Program link | Evidence available |
|---|---|---|
| QA1: Educational program and practice | Outcome-mapped program driven by the planning cycle (Figure 1) | Displayed program; annotated observations; meeting minutes |
| QA2: Children’s health and safety | Risk-benefit assessments for loose parts and gardening experiences | Signed risk assessments; supervision plan |
| QA3: Physical environment | Surplus 12.5 square metres allocated to the standing construction zone; natural materials indoors and outdoors | Environment plan; space calculations |
| QA4: Staffing arrangements | Staffing above minimum ratio (1 educator to 7.3 children against the regulated 1 to 11) | Rosters; ratio calculations |
| QA5: Relationships with children | Sustained shared thinking, revoicing and yarning circles embedded daily | Observation records; learning stories |
| QA6: Collaborative partnerships | Two-way fortnightly program feedback with families; relationship with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung community | Communication records; consultation notes |
| QA7: Governance and leadership | Early childhood teacher leads the planning cycle and mentors the team | Planning meeting minutes; professional learning plan |
Critical Reflection
Preparing this program challenged several of my assumptions. My first draft contained eighteen planned experiences; reducing them to ten recurring ones forced me to confront a tendency to equate a full program with a busy one. Even now, I am conscious that ten experiences with named strategies could crowd out the long stretches of uninterrupted play in which children exercise their own intentionality, the very capacity V2.0 asks me to honour (AGDE, 2022). My safeguard is the reflect phase of each planning meeting, where the team will ask explicitly whether children had sustained control of their play, not only whether the planned learning occurred.
I also recognise that my partnership strategies assume families will engage through a digital platform and written contributions, which privileges confident writers and fluent English speakers. A genuinely mutual approach must treat informal conversations at drop-off and pick-up as legitimate program input, and I intend to record these verbally shared insights with the same seriousness as written feedback (Rouse & O’Brien, 2017). Finally, I am aware that as a non-Indigenous educator I cannot self-assess the cultural safety of the Aboriginal perspectives embedded in this program. My next professional learning priority is to continue building the relationship with local Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung organisations, seek their feedback on the garden and storytelling experiences, and act on that feedback even where it means removing an element I valued (SNAICC, 2019).
Conclusion
This fortnight program demonstrates that a kindergarten curriculum can be simultaneously play-based, intentional and accountable. Regulatory calculations confirm that staffing and space actively support small-group teaching; the rationale grounds every design choice in the EYLF V2.0, cultural-historical play theory and Australian evidence; and the program table makes the chain from experience to outcome to strategy to assessment explicit. The planning cycle ensures the fortnight operates as a living document, re-planned from evidence rather than delivered exactly as written, while family partnership and culturally responsive practice position the program within its community and its Country. The mapping to the NQS shows quality practice and compliance to be aligned rather than competing demands. The true measure of the program will not be the completion of its experiences but the learning trajectories that become visible when the cycle turns again.
References
Arthur, L., Beecher, B., Death, E., Dockett, S., & Farmer, S. (2021). Programming and planning in early childhood settings (8th ed.). Cengage Learning Australia.
Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority. (2023). Guide to the National Quality Framework. ACECQA.
Australian Government Department of Education. (2022). Belonging, being and becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (V2.0). Australian Government Department of Education for the Ministerial Council.
Barblett, L., Knaus, M., & Barratt-Pugh, C. (2016). The pushes and pulls of pedagogy in the early years: Competing knowledges and the erosion of play-based learning. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 41(4), 36-43.
Commonwealth of Australia. (2022). Australian Early Development Census national report 2021: Early childhood development in Australia. Department of Education.
Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011 (NSW).
Edwards, S. (2017). Play-based learning and intentional teaching: Forever different? Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 42(2), 4-11.
Fleer, M. (2021). Play in the early years (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Grieshaber, S., Krieg, S., McArdle, F., & Sumsion, J. (2021). Intentional teaching in early childhood education and care: A scoping review. Review of Education, 9(3), 1-38.
Reconciliation Australia. (2021). Narragunnawali: Reconciliation in education program guide. Reconciliation Australia.
Rouse, E., & O’Brien, D. (2017). Mutuality and reciprocity in parent-teacher relationships: Understanding the nature of partnerships in early childhood education and care provision. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 42(2), 45-52.
Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care. (2019). Keeping our kids safe: Cultural safety and the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. SNAICC.