At East Prescot Road, staff are skilled at observing children at play and using their knowledge of schemes to support and extend children's own ideas. Schema play is how our children learn to make sense of the world.

A schema (also known as a play schema) is like a set of instructions. As adults we use them all the time, and we don’t really notice we’re doing it. Switch on a light or make a sandwich and you are using a schema to do it; a mental model you’ve created through a process of trial and error to find the best and most efficient way of completing your task.

Our schemas aren’t always right. What’s special about them is that they represent the current state of our knowledge. Over time, and as we explore further, we come to realise that there were gaps in our understanding. We can then modify our schema to reflect this new information. I drop a football. It bounces back up. I drop a tennis ball. It bounces back up. I have a schema that balls bounce. But one day I drop a ball of play dough and it doesn’t bounce. I update my schema: balls that spring back into shape after you’ve squeezed them will bounce. Balls that don’t, won’t. Which works until I try dropping a golf ball…

Schema play is especially noticeable in toddlers. Bashing, banging, pushing, pulling: destruction testing is a key feature of this kind of activity. What does this thing do? What happens if I drop it? Will it break if I hit it? What if I hit it again? Your child wants the answers to all these questions and will persevere until they have them.  They are trying to make sense of the world, one action at a time.

Our learning about chidlren's schemes tells us that:

• Knowledge can ‘emerge’ without being taught.
• Children are scientists- schemes are a way of children testing their environment and noticing patterns and differences to build their own knowledge. These are called ‘Threads of Thinking’.
• We look at what children can do and what they know rather than what they can’t or don’t 
• We place value on how each child contributes to their own learning.
• Children can use one scheme or several, and these schemes can change over time and from play to play.
• Schemaplay as an ‘intervention’ is based on practitioner observation then practitioner ‘seeding’: observing what children ‘know’ and ‘can do’ in free play (a child’s scheme/s), then offering new resources to support those schemes.
• There is a strong emphasis on free-flow play and helping children to extend their play through the ‘quiet’ and ‘creative’ intervention of the adult.
• The longer children are engaged in free flow play, the deeper their learning.
• The role of the practitioner is to support and participate in sustained shared thinking which doesn’t always have to include verbal communication.
• Practitioners can use their observation of children’s scheme/s to provide resources that will support the individual child to extend their play to include their next steps eg. by using a child’s scheme to creatively plan a way to learn numerals 1-5.

The individual child:

• Learns during free flow play without being ‘told’
• Learns using schemes to notice patterns and build knowledge
• Learns more deeply the longer they are engaged in free flow play.

The practitioner:

• Observes what the child ‘can do’ and what the child ‘knows’
• Uses their observations to decide on the scheme/s they have observed the child engaging in
• Uses their observation/s to plan creative ways to ‘quietly’ support the extension of the child’s free flow play

Further reading:

Siraj-Blatchford, J. And Brock, L. (2020) An Introduction to SchemaPlay Pedagogy: Child-Centred Practice Through Active Free-Flow Play in  Siraj-Blatchford and Brock (eds. 2020) SchemaPlay Pedagogy: Child-Centred Practice Through Active Free Flow Play.

Siraj-Blatchford, J. And Brock, L. (2020) What Operational Schemes Might Look Like in Children’s Play- A Few Definitions in  Siraj-Blatchford and Brock (eds. 2020) SchemaPlay Pedagogy: Child-Centred Practice Through Active Free Flow Play

Siraj-Blatchford, J. And Brock, L. (2020) The Revised EYFS Curriculum: Supplement With SchemaPlay in  Siraj-Blatchford and Brock (eds. 2020) SchemaPlay Pedagogy: Child-Centred Practice Through Active Free Flow Play

Robertson,  K. (2020) My SchemaPlay Pedagogical Journey in  Siraj-Blatchford and Brock (eds. 2020) SchemaPlay Pedagogy: Child-Centred Practice Through Active Free Flow Play