Take account of gender differences in your curriculum planning, say Marie Charlton and Anne O'Connor
Foundation Stage practitioners are under pressure from both parents and the Government to raise standards of literacy and numeracy. As a result, some settings have adopted overly formal teaching methods and reduced children's access to the outdoors - to the detriment of all children, but particularly boys.
Practitioners must, therefore, reflect on their practice to ensure that they are providing a play-based curriculum, with ready access to the outdoors, essential to children of this age. Equally, they need to consider in their planning how gender differences may affect children's learning styles, the range of opportunities presented to both sexes across the curriculum. and practitioners' attitudes (See box, also 'Ask yourself', page 16).
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