Early Years: Nick

In one short sentence, the authors of this report on EYFS sum up so much.   Here I am, in a cold study with the snow pelting down and the light fading,  struggling with what to say about Early Years and Health, and they give me the answer.

Let them say it themselves, then – although the emphases and editing are entirely mine.

Enhancing children’s development is skilful work, and practitioners need training and professional support to do it well, including making decisions about children’s individual needs and the ways to ‘personalise’ their learning.

Talking about feelings has beneficial effects. Although this has been a self-evident truth for decades, new research on ‘Social and emotional aspects of learning’ for children shows how it benefits learners of all ages, even children under four.

Formative assessment will lie at the heart of providing a supporting and stimulating environment for every child. This may require professional development for practitioners and liaison with individuals and agencies outside the setting.

The art of early years practice is getting the balance right between guided and self initiated learning, either in homes or in settings.

Skillful work. Art. Balance.

The excitement of helping a child melt a handprint into frost.

Knowing when to swap the sand for cooked spaghetti, or to put a plastic penguin in a tub of water in the freezer for tomorrow.

And from the point of view of ‘health promotiong activities?’

Is the In Depth section for EYFS Health and Well Being really sufficient?

This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oom2EPuNP… is well worth visiting, even if there’s no decent visuals…

Without comment for now, this link takes you to the Oktaikon web pages, and  this is the short YouTube intro, Marcus on Okki blocs

There’s a mini learning journey for practitioners here.

We start off on the EYFS home page and click on profile. Hidden (far too well, really, as we come to expect live hyperlinks to look obvious) on this page is a link to the NAA work on the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile:  and in case they move it, here is the link as it appears at present: http://www.naa.org.uk/naa_17850.aspx

And here we meet Ellis and friends. This link takes us to Ellis and Ashton’s exploration of plans to build a spaceship, with windows, teleport (or lift; there is a professional disagreement between the two designers here) and a jumping device.

Their learning journey is made clear for us by the possible scale points which is downloadable, but it also made me think of the remarks of Margaret Edgington in The Foundation Stage Teacher in Action (2004, p158):

However intensive their study of children during initial teacher training, teachers still have a great deal to learn. Early years teaching is quite simply about studying and learning about children. There are two related parts to this study. First, teachers need to understand about children in general - ideally from birth until at least 7 or 8… They need to understand environmental, sociological and psychological theories in order that their view of society is broadened, and is taken beyond their own limited life experience.  They also need to know that individual children develop uniquely… Throughout their careers, teachers need to develop further their general view of children through the study of individuals. [my emphasis]

Hmmm.  Did I say a mini learning journey? It might be just part of the practitioners’ job, but I wouldn’t want to underestimate the task.

Better late than never, the interim report of the Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum is finally out. This link goes to the BBC’s reporting; this link to the page from which (until or unless DCFS move the URL)  the ipsissima verba of Jim Rose can be downloaded.
Provisional Recommendations 10 and 11 are the ones I was looking for most eagerly, especially after this morning’s reportage about key subjects &c &c. They are
Recommendation 10:
(i) Entry into reception class in the September immediately following a child’s fourth birthday should become the norm. The Review will explore how this might be achieved without unduly restricting parental choice, for example by allowing parents to choose a period of part-time attendance.
(ii) The DCSF should provide information for parents and local authorities about the optimum conditions and the benefits to children of entering reception class in the September immediately after their fourth birthday.
Recommendation 11: The Review will consider how best to support teachers and practitioners to provide effective play-based learning.
Hmmm. This seems to suggest that children will be in school - not nursery, where the quality may be seen to lie, but in Reception classes - when they are four and a bit. Le Roy le veult. So far, my mouth turns down.  However, unpacking recommendation 11 - “how..to support…effective play-based learning” is more encouraging. Into school with you, little child, and if your parents don’t like it, you don’t have to go all day, but there you will find play-based learning, as outlined by the best research.
I remain cynical about the will - and mostly the budgets -  of schools and the expertise of YR teachers  to implement this.  This isn’t to do down the commitment of teachers of young children, but to note that they continue to be faced with a continuing dynamic that looks to SATS looming (despite what the report has to say) and the demands for early, noticeable acquisition of secretarial and calculation skills, which simply raises the questions - deeply related - of funding, vision and qualifications…
And the question for us in ITT has to be: how do we train new entrants to the profession to bring this change about?  How do we help create EYFS teachers, rather than very early Primary teachers?

Two stories arrive on my BBC news ticker tape this morning. Both would be worth a comment; together they are a perfect exemplar of how, as Carol Aubrey says, “children are at the nexus of power relations, policy concerns and value investments of home and school.”

The first item is a simple and depressingly familiar tale of how Church is seen - can be seen - as a showcase, in which children may be cute and decorative, “mild, obedient, good as He,” but shouldn’t be disruptive of adult business. Church is for grown-ups, and the power discourse suggests that either the minister (or celebrant, or president, or whatever) is doing something so special, so magic, that s/he cannot lose concentration, or that the Bride and Groom are so caught up in some soupy myth about weddings couldn’t possibly want to start their married life with the sounds of - horror of horrors! - children. Of course, these are extremes, and it’s possible neither of them remotely reflect what happened in this case. I want to think about this in the context of childhood, of course – but it’s also worth linking the story with another from the same local news site. Inclusion is a hotter topic all of a sudden - not just becasue of the gay/women Bishops debate in the Cof E, but also because the debate on how we include children and other disruptive elements seems to be cropping up elsewhere. How does the Church - how does anyone - value These People? Perhaps it is about marginalised groups struggling to find a voice after all.

The second story grabs headlines but I feel more ambiguous about it, if only because the clumsy reportage doesn’t do justice to the idea. This link goes to the actual report, at least. It looks at children not so much older, still in the Early Years community (if we can talk about such a thing) being given Shakespeare to read. Nothing wrong, really, except the overcrowding of the EY curriculum, until we read that a spokesperson for National Association for the Teaching of English is reported as saying, “the earlier children are introduced to Shakespeare the better.”

Hmmm. And I thought educationalists were growing out of that argument.