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Within the Kinder room, Ages 4-5 the children have been mostly interested in group pretend play, learning topics, getting creative and outdoor play. Educator's have been continuously promoting school readiness to ensure the children are prepared for Primary School.

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Assessment 2 observation demonstrated children’s social and cognitive development as they engage in play and teamwork and collaborative play without the educator’s guidance and participation in play. Based on the observations I began thinking 'How does collaborative learning promote cognitive development?'

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The children all show they feel safe, secure and supported within their environment as they’re able to openly communicate their needs, feelings and ideas which Links to LO1: Identity and LO2: Community as the children engage in group play. They all show that they’re active participants in their learning whilst they follow and extend their own interests. The most common thread between these observations is teamwork. All the children showed a variety of rich and meaningful inquiry-based activities whilst working collaboratively with peers and respecting each other’s ways of doing things.

The observations connect to the theory of Lev Vygotsky cultural and social context for learning as children’s cognitive development stems from their social interactions as children and their partner's co-construct knowledge. Another theory from Vygotsky that connects to the observation is that language develops from social interactions, for communication purposes. Vygotsky differentiates between three forms of language: social speech, private speech and inner speech. The children in the observations take part in social speech as they communicate externally to peers and educators. 'Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speech - it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings.'- (Vygotsky, 1962: p. 149)

Lastly, in the observation there was some interaction of myself and used the “ninja” approach as the children engaged with each other I was there for support and to provide them with resources and some aid. This links up with Vygotsky’s theory ZPD to see what the children can do on their own and protentional development and what they can do with the aid of an adult. But not doing it for them allowing the child to develop skills.

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The things that worked really well in the group observations were that the children felt comfortable enough to voice their opinions, respect each other and play! My main concern within the group play is always how children may suddenly react and if a child gets hurt/ injured as an educator that's not what we plan.  I believe that there was nothing that did not work as the experiences were spontaneously based. The only thing I would have changed was to have an actual ball or football for ob 3.

Behind the group experiences, the children showed they have developed a sense of belonging to a community. They were cooperative and able to participate in reciprocal relationships as they use the play to investigate, project and explore new ideas.

Following up on the previous experiences is for the children to work as a team to complete a task that involves building on their problem-solving abilities, cognitive development and social communication as they all have the same goal to reach.

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The children sat down with the educator with a large world map puzzle. The children were asking lots of questions and noticing some of the pictures on the puzzle pieces "it's a penguin" "I see a tiger" "Amber here is a whale" At The start of the puzzle I suggested to the children that we separate the border and flat edge pieces first. The children began sorting and separating the middle puzzle pieces from the border pieces. I began to step back and watch the children figure out if they can start the puzzle together. They were not able to as they weren't communicating with each other. I stepped in and began to help them begin connecting the border together the children commented "this is a hard puzzle" once we had the border laid out I stepped back again encouraging the children to talk with each other to communicate their next steps. The children still seemed overwhelmed but they did start slowly adding puzzle pieces together but not to the border of the puzzle "Amber where is this one" "I think these two go together but I'm not sure" I continued to then help them start the middle before saying to them "alright, now it's your turn to try!" After a lot of moving pieces around trialling and erroring, they started to put the puzzle together "I think this piece goes with the piece that's in your hand" "Let us try and find all the orange pieces" I stepped away for a moment to encourage them to do the puzzle without being involved. I saw that they began to use their communication and cognitive skills to work together as a team to complete the task. I believe with the presence of the educator the children expected me to complete the task for them but when "unavailable" they were able to come together to complete the puzzle not long after moving away from the group.

I explored the ZPD theory to see what the children could do when I thought they didn't need any more assistance and I was correct, they were able to complete the task they were given through their social and cognitive development abilities.