Core Skills Analysis
English
Arrie used imaginative language and role-play while acting as a criminal, police officer, and emergency responder. She practised taking turns, creating scenarios, communicating roles, and using spoken language to represent pretend 000 calls and emergency responses. Arrie also expressed preferences clearly when she declined hair brushing and chose activities. These experiences supported oral communication, narrative development, and audience awareness in a meaningful social context.
Science
Arrie explored simple ideas about emergencies, communication, and responses through pretend play. By acting out calling 000 and responding to imagined situations, she considered how people and services might work together when something unexpected happens. Her drawing with oil pastels and scratch-and-draw materials also involved observing how tools and pressure created different visual effects. These activities encouraged curiosity, experimentation, and descriptive thinking.
Health and Personal Development
Arrie experienced frustration when the Wi-Fi was not restored immediately and responded by throwing items and raising her voice. After approximately 15 minutes, she independently returned to a calm state and selected drawing as a regulating activity. She also communicated her personal boundary by declining hair brushing and confidently led activities that reflected her interests. This demonstrated developing emotional awareness, choice-making, self-expression, and use of calming strategies.
The Arts
Arrie expressed creativity through styling the support worker’s hair with bows, oil-pastel drawing, and a collaborative scratch-and-draw activity. She selected materials, contributed ideas, and initiated a new art activity herself. Her imaginative police and emergency play further combined drama, movement, character creation, and storytelling. These experiences helped Arrie explore identity and communicate ideas through visual and dramatic forms.
Mathematics
Arrie’s activities provided informal opportunities to practise sequencing and time awareness. She followed ordered steps while brushing hair and placing bows, used turn-taking sequences during shared play, and developed beginning-middle-end structures in emergency scenarios. The session also included a clear duration from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, offering a practical context for discussing elapsed time. No formal number or calculation task was described.
Tips
Tips: Create a simple visual “calm plan” with Arrie showing early feelings, safe choices, and activities such as drawing or quiet play. Extend the emergency role-play by making pretend service cards for police, ambulance, and fire services, while practising when it is appropriate to call 000 and what information to give. Invite Arrie to draw a comic strip of an emergency scenario and dictate or write the dialogue. For a sensory art extension, compare oil pastels, crayons, and scratch-art tools, discussing how pressure and colour change the result.
Book Recommendations
- The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas: A visual story that helps children identify and discuss different emotions.
- The Art Book for Children by Editors of Phaidon Press: An accessible collection of creative art activities and ideas for exploring artists and materials.
- The Big Book of Rescue Vehicles by DK: An informative, child-friendly introduction to emergency vehicles and the people who use them.
Learning Standards
- English – AC9E6LY01: Arrie used spoken interaction, role-play, turn-taking, and expressive language to influence and engage a play partner.
- English – AC9E6LA05: Her imaginative scenarios used characters, dialogue, and role-based language to shape audience response.
- Science – AC9SPS01: The pretend emergency activities supported observation and discussion of actions, responses, and changing situations, although no formal investigation was completed.
- Health and Personal Development: Arrie practised communicating preferences, recognising distress through behaviour, and returning to a calm activity after dysregulation. The supplied standards list does not include a specific Health code.
- The Arts: Arrie created visual art and participated in dramatic role-play, developing creative expression and confidence. The supplied standards list does not include a specific Arts code.
- Mathematics – informal connection: The session involved sequencing and a three-hour time span, but it did not provide enough evidence to match a listed mathematics achievement standard directly.
Try This Next
- Make a three-step calm-plan worksheet: ‘I feel…’, ‘I can…’, ‘I return when…’.
- Create an emergency-role-play card set with safe scenarios and prompts for what information a 000 caller should provide.
- Draw and label a four-panel comic showing an emergency, the call, the response, and the resolution.
- Make a feelings thermometer and colour in the strategy Arrie might choose at each level.