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Four years ago, at Grove House Nursery School and Children’s Centre in Southall, we embarked on a journey to develop our practice, with the aim of ensuring we provide a context that deepens children’s thinking and learning in our community.
The setting now provides a spacious environment that harnesses and connects children’s interests in their world, and their needs, through the expressive materials it offers. Opportunities are given for freedom, responsibility, companionship and autonomy, as well as collaboration with adults who understand how children develop and learn.
STARTING POINTS
Early years research
The changes we have made have been informed by research, which highlights how crucial early experiences are, particularly during the first three years of a child’s life, in setting the tone for future successes.
Research by neuroscientists has shown how brains are ‘shaped, grown and built’ on early experiences (see www.developingchild.harvard.edu). Research by psychologists, such as Dr David Whitebread’s work on self-regulation and Professor Carol Dweck’s work on mindset, has found that characteristics such as motivation, self-regulation, a ‘can-do’ attitude, resilience, critical thinking, problem-solving and risk-taking are necessary for effective learning to take place.
Also, research on language acquisition, such as that by Professors Kathy Hirsch-Pasek and Usha Goswami, has highlighted the word gap between children from different social groups and its effects on their life chances. High-quality early learning, with effective early intervention, is essential in tackling these issues, as has been demonstrated by EPPE and HighScope research.
Thinking, talking and problem-solving
Learning that inspires process and provokes enquiry is essential. Nurturing Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL) is a statutory part of the EYFS, with play and first-hand experiences providing the most natural conditions for exploration and for meaning-making.
Language learning is supported and scaffolded through social interaction with adults who can judge when to join in play, or not, and when to teach a new skill or concept in a secure and enabling environment. The language that children know and use contributes to the thinking process.
Having the ability to use thinking language (‘I wonder…how…why…’) in context enables children to share their ideas and thinking and learn from others. The more children do this, the greater the pool of ideas and interests that they have to work from. Children become the catalyst and resources for each other as they engage in collaborative problem-solving.
The way the environment is set up and resourced, the way it responds to children’s interests and connects with the local community is a key component in supporting children’s levels of engagement and their learning in all areas. It is often referred to as the third teacher for this reason.
THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE
To be effective, change needs a whole-team collaborative effort, as often when embedding new ideas and skills there can be an inconsistency between what one learns in theory and what one executes in practice. Take, for example, a child learning to ride a bike. The adult can explain how pushing down on the pedals will move the bike along, and the child will learn to recount the process. However, the next time they jump on the bike, the child continues to use their feet to push it around the garden. This is their default position; they are on ‘auto-pilot’. Changing these deep-rooted patterns of behaviour takes time, and this is true for adults too.
We needed to start our journey somewhere that involved the whole team, and our planning process was the one point that brought us all together at the end of each day. That was where our journey started; with an audit of our planning systems.
It also seemed an obvious starting point as our planning sheets documented how we aimed to challenge and extend children’s thinking and learning, and a key question we wanted to answer was: how did our planning respond to, or even provoke, children’s ideas and thinking?
OUR OLD PLANNING SYSTEM
On a daily basis
We are a 60-place nursery organised into two classrooms and a garden. Each of the areas had its own planning sheet incorporating the seven areas of learning. At the end of each day, the teams shared their observations, decided what to change or add to enhance learning and recorded their decisions.
This meant that every day we were setting up 21 different learning areas or activities. This ‘overplanning’ resulted in an abundance of resources that could change or be moved almost on a daily basis according to where the need was perceived by the adult.
On a weekly basis
We operated a focus-child system, with each key person choosing one of their children to observe for the week. The aim was to get an idea of the child’s interests and needs in order to plan a related focus activity for the following week.
The idea for the planned activity was shared with the team so that other children could be invited to join in. During the activity, we captured the learning of the focus child only and recorded it in a Learning Story, which was then filed in their Learning Journey.
Much of the discussion during these sessions related to what the adult hoped the child would learn from the activity. Often, the ‘focus’ children were unwilling to participate – perhaps their interests had moved on or they were involved in self-chosen play and resisted distractions. At this point, key persons often faced the dilemma about what to do – to insist or not!
What worked
- From our audit, we could see that our planning system enabled us to:
- discuss what children had been playing with, enjoying and doing
- share any concerns about particular children and agree support
- observe and note children’s play interests
- plan for each child every term.
What didn’t work
We found that our planning:
- was too detailed due to the overly complex planning grids
- was based on adults’ perceptions of children’s interests
- led to daily changes to the environment – for example, the dinosaurs could be in one classroom one day and in another, outside or not available the following day
- focused on children’s interests in resources rather than on their ideas and thinking.
Questions raised
The audit raised various questions, principally about the extent to which the ever-changing environment was preventing children from:
- wallowing in their ideas
- expanding their interests and thinking
- engaging in sustained social interactions
- developing deeper levels of involvement.
Strategies for change
In response to our questions, we decided to:
- revise and simplify our planning systems
- focus more on developing children’s CoEL, including allowing children to take risks in their thinking and to problem-solve
- prioritise the Prime areas of learning for our youngest children (starting from where they are in their development rather than chronological age) to support children to engage with learning opportunities
- consider how we could streamline the environment, including the location of resources and the number and use of resources to support different learning styles. We wanted to develop children’s creative and critical thinking through the continued use of core resources and core experiences.
OUR NEW PLANNING SYSTEM
First, we devised a simpler planning grid for each classroom linked to our newly arranged environment. This was revised two years later after working with early years consultant Di Chilvers, researching other planning methods and visiting other settings. Our planning system now responds principally to the needs of the children ‘in the moment’, and is based on the ‘planning in the moment’ model developed by Anna Ephgrave.
On a daily basis
This method of planning attaches particular value to the very many ‘teachable moments’ that happen naturally while interacting with children throughout the day. For example, if a practitioner notices a child holding scissors in two hands, they will immediately assess the child’s need and decide to support in the moment (or not depending on the practitioner’s knowledge of the child).
In addition, we jot down observations, children’s comments and questions and ideas of interest to share later on a large whiteboard. We also take photographs as an aide-memoire.
Longer-term planning
Our longer-term planning follows a similar pattern, with the observation, assessment and planning cycle often done in collaboration with children, colleagues and family. It involves practitioners observing; looking, listening and noting key components in children’s conversation, their levels of involvement, the characteristics that they bring to the play and the direction that the play takes. We want to know what play tells us about the children’s interests, their thinking and their understanding.
The observations are recorded using photographs and written descriptions and form the basis of the children’s Learning Journeys.
Assessment
Assessment involves sharing and analysing the Learning Journey with colleagues, and children, to get a better understanding of what the observations tell us. Involving the children in the process gives them an opportunity to reflect on their thinking and learning and supports language learning.
This can also help us clarify the thinking behind children’s play. It is a very visible form of listening to children and valuing their work.
Next steps
The planning of next steps takes different forms and can include more of the same or changes to the learning environment – for example, the resources available, planned visits out of the setting or visitors to the nursery and involving parents in particular ways. This process repeats, and the ongoing cycle results in the children’s thinking and learning being deepened as ‘projects’ develop through the process of listening and collaboration.
What better way for a child to feel a sense of connectedness to the learning environment than by linking children’s ideas directly to the planned learning opportunities in a very organic and natural way?
IMPACT
More than three years on, and the strengths of this new way of working are making a significant impact on the children’s learning. Documenting children’s learning as a Learning Story is making the children’s learning visible to children, practitioners and parents.
For children
As we share the Learning Journeys with the children, they deepen their understanding, develop their language and reflect on their learning. Children’s levels of involvement have improved and their engagement with open-ended resources supports creativity and critical thinking (see example Learning Story about the children’s exploration of castles, left).
Our link adviser Di Chilvers noted, ‘The documentation of the interest in ice-cream combines children’s talk/conversations and how they link to their thinking and learning (sustained shared thinking). This is shared with the children to deepen their understanding, develop language further and reflect on their learning (meta-cognition).’
For practitioners
Documentation supports us to develop our understanding of children’s thinking and learning. Key themes and patterns in children’s interests are shared and we can draw on these to plan possible lines of development.
Di Chilvers noted, ‘Following interests through a project approach is one of the key strengths of practice across the Nursery School which has developed and evolved through the team’s reflections on practice.’
For parents
Documentation has made children’s learning more visible and parents are supported to see how learning is progressing. They are more involved in their children’s learning and often take part in it – for example, by sending photographs from home that link with a project.
Di Chilvers noted, ‘Following children’s interests and using a documentation approach has supported and strengthened home/school partnerships. Building on using Learning Stories, parents are becoming more involved in their child’s development and learning.’
As a team we continue to learn as we make sense of new ways of working and developing opportunities and learning experiences that we offer children and parents in this community.
MORE INFORMATION
www.developingchild.harvard.edu
Dr David Whitebread, www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/whitebread
Professor Carol Dweck, https://profiles.stanford.edu/carol-dweck
Professor Kathy Hirsch-Pasek, https://kathyhirshpasek.com
Professor Usha Goswami, www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?ucg10
The EPPE Project, https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/18189/2/SSU-SF-2004-01.pdf
Ephgrave A (2015) The Nursery Year in Action. Routledge
Harms T and Clifford RM (1980) The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale. Teachers College Press
Jo Dabir-Alai is lead practitioner at Grove House Nursery School and Children’s Centre, Southall
NURSERY WORLD CONFERENCE AND SHOW
Jo Dabir-Alai and her colleague Ranbir Jaswal will be among the speakers at the Nursery World Show in London on 7-8 February. The new Ofsted framework and what it means for early years practice will be one of the main themes running through both seminars and masterclasses.
The masterclasses will focus on ‘Quality of education’ and ‘Behaviour and attitudes’. Among the seminars, Jan Dubiel will be explaining how to ensure progression in children’s learning.
The new inspection framework is also the theme of our Birmingham conference on 6 December. The main focus will be how to develop and deliver a broad and balanced early years curriculum that offers progression and challenge in children’s learning. Also on the programme are cultural capital and ‘core experiences’.
For more information, visit: www.nurseryworldshow.comwww.inspectionconference.co.uk
