What is Walker Learning at Living Waters?

If you have ever witnessed a child build a sandcastle at the beach, make a mud soup in the garden, or build a unique creation with blocks, you have witnessed play-based learning in action. When a child learns through play, they learn problem solving, working collaboratively, sharing, cause and effect, and much more. The Walker Learning Approach (WLA) is a teaching pedagogy which uses play-based learning as its foundation but takes learning to the next level with the teacher working alongside children to guide, direct and encourage them in learning specific outcomes.

Let’s use learning about food as an example. If the specific learning outcome is learning about where food comes from, a simple play-based learning activity would be to set up a farming play station with farm animals, some fruit and veg and a pretend play grocery store. Children would learn through play by collecting eggs from chickens, or milk from the cows, taking it to their store and emulating shop keeper/customer.

The WLA uses this foundation but takes learning to a deeper level with the teacher guiding them in their conversations and play. Instead, the same activity may look like this: the teacher may begin with a variety of foods set out into food groups – fruit and veg, grains, eggs, etc. She may begin with some questions such as, which foods are fruit, and which are vegetables? This may lead to creating a vegetable garden and discussing how farmers grow food. The children will eventually get to harvest their food and then create a meal with it. This may then lead to more discussions about healthy and unhealthy foods. Perhaps they will find bugs in the vegetable garden, which may inform a whole new learning journey about insects, or the importance of bees for food production.

The WLA is designed to allow children to lead their own learning, depending on their inquiries, with the teacher there to guide them. Essentially, this means staff allow children to direct their own learning. This approach requires a deeper level of understanding and engagement from staff to connect with children and their interests. Children are active participants in their learning which means they are more engaged, which is a holistic way of teaching and learning.

Here at Living Waters Lutheran College, we have adopted the Walker Learning Approach in Kindergarten to Year 1 and our staff are passionate about using this model to enhance the learning of our students. If you would like to take a personal tour of our College on Wednesday, 23 March or Saturday, 26 March, please call us on 08 9593 1211 or visit the March Tours Page on our website.