By using them creatively, practitioners should be able to improve their own knowledge of child development and to plan challenging activities and environments that promote active learning.
Following the example of the cards used in Birth to Three Matters, the EYFS cards provide an overview for the guidance, broken down into convenient bite-sized elements.
The cards illustrate how the advice and recommendations can be put into practice and how practitioners should consider implementing a cycle of observation, planning and assessment to ensure that they meet the individual needs of all children.
There are 24 cards in all, covering how to implement the principles and the detail of the themes and commitments:
- One set of 16 cards focuses on the content of the principles
- A further set of six cards explains each specific area of learning
- There are also two overview cards: one reminding practitioners about the detail of the themes and commitments and another summarising children's developmental stages.
The accompanying poster highlights some visual messages about the over-arching principles and how they can be explained effectively to parents (see box).
Overview cards
The overview card for the framework is useful insofar as it is a smaller version of the poster with identical illustrations on one side. The reverse side gives a more detailed explanation of each of the themes and commitments and repeats the information about each of the commitments as contained in the statutory framework.
Again, this is helpful for practitioners who need to refresh their memory at a glance and who may wish to explain specific elements of the programme to colleagues as they plan together. With this overview card, it is easy to see how the commitments overlap and relate to one another.
The child development overview card aims to summarise the more important aspects of child development in each of the six stages of the EYFS. Importantly, it advises practitioners to seek further support and information from the practice guidance and CD-Rom, also forming part of the EYFS pack.
The problem with this overview is that it is so simplified and condensed that the language and information are not always precise, and so can be misleading, particularly in the coverage of the youngest age range. Specifically, the descriptions do not reflect accurately most people's knowledge of the stages of development.
Practitioners would already need to be fully knowledgeable about children's development from birth to five years to make sense of the descriptions offered on the card.
It is also a pity that there is no mention on this card of children with delayed learning, hearing or sight impairment, learning difficulties or English as an additional language.
Where the cards for the Birth to Three Matters framework tried to be reasonably helpful about supporting childcarers' knowledge and expertise, these EYFS cards are not as instructive.
As this is the only card that contains information about children's developmental stages, it means that practitioners will lack a source that provides the information and guidance that fully informs the observation, planning or assessing cycle.
It is recommended, therefore, that practitioners:
- see the card for what it is - an overly simplified overview that cannot alone provide the information needed to support each detailed stage of a child's develpment
- view the card as a starting point for further reading on all aspects of babies' and young children's development
- use the card in conjunction with the Birth to Three cards, which contain more information to guide their practice.
The principles cards
These contain four colour-coded themes, and each theme has a sub-set of four cards which identify the commitments corresponding to a particular principle:
- A unique child - child development, keeping safe, health and well-being and inclusive practice
- Positive relationships - respecting each other, parents as partners, supporting learning and key person
- Enabling environments - supporting every child, the learning environment, the wider context and observation, assessment and planning
- Learning and development - play and exploration, active learning, creativity and critical thinking and areas of learning and development
- Early Years Foundation Stage cards - there are an additional six practice cards in this set that describe in greater detail the breadth and coverage of each area of learning in the EYFS.
How the cards work
The contents of each card, whichever theme or commitment, follow similar lines and emphasise the importance of thoughtful and responsive adult intervention and reflection about how practitioners should support and extend children's learning.
On one side of every card there is a short paragraph that highlights the relevance of the particular commitment, together with boxes filled with helpful information. One or more images of children and adults also illustrate the subject of the card. On the reverse side there are more photographic images and three boxes of support, focusing on:
- effective practice - which explains what practitioners should do and outlines ideas for providing stimulating activities and environments
- challenges and dilemmas - which identifies what practitioners may find difficult to implement and do, because all children are different
- reflecting on practice - which reminds practitioners what they need to think about to improve their own knowledge and practice, and gives guidance about the sort of evidencing and evaluation of their practice they should adopt.
In the bottom right-hand corner of every card there is reference to other parts of the guidance document to help practitioners develop special knowledge and expertise of the subject.
Critical analysis of the cards
As with the child development overview, attempting to cram so much complex information into the 16 cards has again resulted in short-hand explanations and a lack of precision. Nor is the language as accessible as the writers may have hoped.
For example, the opening statement on the Play and Exploration card notes: 'In their play children learn at their highest level.' Yet this statement is not expanded to explain exactly what it means, so could be misinterpreted by readers. Does it mean, for instance, that all learning should be introduced through play, or that children learn best when their play is self-directed?
Nowhere on the card does it mention that children play for enjoyment, or that play is their work. Nowhere on the card does it mention that children are playing when they imitate parents and other adults, and that role play in an early years setting allows them to recall, imitate and re-enact their experiences at home and elsewhere.
Because these cards have few references to children's ages and stages of development, it will be difficult to use them to plan effectively to meet children's needs.
The learning and development cards
The six areas of learning
These cards have their own individual style of presentation to help practitioners fulfil the requirements for learning as described in the Children's Act 2006. Through Ofsted inspections the curriculum for all children aged from birth to five years old in registered childcare and education settings will be evaluated and graded.
On one side of each card there is a short overview of the area of learning and the requirements for implementation. There is also a description of the sub-categories belonging to this area in a separate box. For example, for communication, language and literacy, there are these various aspects: language for communication, language for thinking, linking sounds and letters, reading, writing and handwriting.
Each of these aspects is explained in further detail to remind practitioners about the focus of the area of learning. The box alongside it describes what this area of learning means for young children and seeks to relate the acquisition of children's skills and knowledge to elements of normative development.
On the reverse of the card, there are three boxes that explain what settings should do to implement this particular area of learning. The approach is based on the theory that effective delivery of the six areas of learning is achieved through:
- positive relationships
- enabling environments
- learning and development.
These themes for effective delivery recur on the reverse side of all 'six areas of learning' cards and stress to practitioners that they must assess their performance and their personal intervention with children against these recommendations for best practice.
How to use the cards to support observation and planning
1. To make best use of the child development descriptions on the development overview, practitioners should first become familiar with children's normative stages of development from birth to five years and to know the approximate milestones that children will reach in physical, social, emotional and intellectual areas at each stage. This infomation is available in most childcare manuals and course books. It will give a secure background context to the comments and recommendations that are expressed on the EYFS practice cards.
2. To help assess children's individual needs, practitioners should devise observation and record-keeping systems that accurately reflect progress in each area of learning for each individual child. These must be carefully illustrated and annotated with dates and reflective comments so that they can be shared with parents and outside bodies, such as Ofsted.
3. To develop an in-depth knowledge of children's progress, practitioners need to become keyworkers, as recommended throughout the guidance. This will be achieved more effectively if they focus on the needs of a family group of children of different ages so that they have a long-term sustained involvement with them.
This approach should create the optimum enabling environment for learning. The keyworker is in the most favourable position to use and interpret the cards over time with the children for whom they are responsible. Childminders, in particular, who have become familiar with the Birth to Three Matters cards will be able integrate the new cards into their repertoire of activities and assessment processes.
4. To use the cards for effective planning, it is recommended that practitioners design planning sheets that show a clearly identified focus for a day or a week, depending on the age range of the children. The over-arching principle should be evident, as should the way the three elements that support good practice will be addressed: positive relationships, enabling environments, learning and development.
Addressing these three elements of implementation should force practitioners to create fresh ways of working, both as a team and individually, to support learning environments and to focus on children's particular needs for learning and development.
5. To achieve the required learning outcomes, practitioners should design individual play plans for the acquisition of children's knowledge and skills. These will ensure that outcomes for achieving development progress in each area of learning are identified and pursued.
- Part 3: Nursery World, 2 August.
THE EYFS FRAMEWORK
The Children's Act 2006 places on local authorities the duty to be 'market managers' of childcare in their area and to ensure that parents are offered consistent high-quality provision and information across all childcare services.
The Act also outlines how the new regulatory framework for childcare providers, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), will be the means by which services will be assessed. This subsequent guidance, published in May 2007, explains what childcare providers are expected to do.
The programme for this new delivery also incorporates three previous guidance documents:
- the National Standards for Daycare
- the Birth to Three Matters framework
- the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage.
Overall, the new guidance comprises four sections:
- the statutory framework
- the principles into practice cards
- the practice guidance for the EYFS
- the DVD resources for providers and practitioners
The Department for Education and Skills has introduced the framework during this current term and expects local authorities to train all staff working with children under five years old over the next year. The aim is to have the new framework fully in place by September 2008.
PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE POSTER
The poster outlining the principles:
- is designed to be displayed prominently to inform parents about the new guidance and how it applies to their children's developmental progress
- acts as a reminder to staff about the content of the programme
- can be used as a quick reference document to accompany planning formats
- emphasises the importance of working in partnership with parents to support children's learning and development
- provides a focus for discussion with parents, students, staff members and children.
The images on the poster have been carefully selected to:
- show children taking part in meaningful experiences and investigating aspects of the natural world
- emphasise the importance of developing close interactions between adults and children
- demonstrate how such engaged moments can spark meaningful communication and social involvement.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The danger is that practitioners will discard or ignore the Principles into Practice cards because of the sometimes dense and inaccessible language used within them. However, introduced properly and examined carefully, the cards could be very useful in helping practitioners implement the EYFS effectively.
It is recommended that practitioners:
- have adequate time to read the cards on their own
- discuss them with colleagues
- examine each set of cards carefully, referring to each principle and the commitment cards attached.
In this way, they should begin to understand:
- how the information is intended to make them question their own assumptions about how children learn
- how they behave with children
- how they can create stimulating and challenging experiences and environments to support children's successful developmental progress.
A central objective of the cards is to emphasise the importance of developing activities, environments and adult interaction that fully support the implementation of best practice in working with children.
The cards are useful tools to prompt discussion and pro-active involvement in meeting children's needs. Because they are colour-coded and well illustrated, they can be shared with colleagues and parents to explain current areas for observation and assessment.
They could also be used to inform and support the planning process by displaying them alongside planning documents to underline the messages being conveyed through the planned programme.
As a practical embodiment of all aspects of the programme, the cards could become the most used component of it. For this reason, each setting should laminate their set of cards so that they will last longer. (It might be a good idea for the DfES to issue pre-laminated practice cards in future.)
So, despite some faults and shortcomings, the cards should prove a useful addition to the ever-developing armoury of childcare practitioners. They need to be given the serious attention they deserve.
