In this keynote address Leslee Alllen shares her journey into the weaving of play pedagogy and structured, explicit teaching together. She aims to focus on how to ensure she is guided by the Science of Learning, while still honouring play pedagogy for her year one/two class. She gives practical examples of how she teaches all areas of literacy and maths through both a structured and playful lens.

This was a keynote presentation at Sharing Best Practice Te Tai Tokerau in Whangārei on 14 September 2024.

Leslee has been a teaching principal for the past 17 years, with her teaching experience ranging from Year 1-4. She is a passionate advocate for children, embraces a play based pedagogy, blended with dramatic inquiry and believes it is possible to weave a pedagogy based on play with a structured, explicit approach. She started her blog Number Agents in 2016. Since then she has created a Facebook page and group and dabbles in TikTok. She doesn’t delete any blog posts from her journey so it stands as testament to her learning over time. Along the way she has become very passionate about the Science of Learning and how it might look in practice. In 2020 she started writing a scope and sequence for early years Maths as she could not find anything she liked. She believes that if we are trauma aware, developmentally responsive and have a solid understanding of children as individuals, we can ensure all children experience success.