Guest Post by @Emmccatt 

EYFS always seems to be a subject of discussion on Twitter. It seems that everyone, no matter what phase, job title or area of expertise, has an opinion. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to write a series of blogs delving into the practice of Early Years. This blog will focus on provision and how it is used effectively in the setting.

EYFS always seems to be a subject of discussion on Twitter. It seems that everyone, no matter what phase, job title or area of expertise, has an opinion. Share on X

What is continuous provision?

When Early Years is discussed on twitter, the subject of ‘play’ often comes up. For some, they picture children running around all day not learning anything. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Continuous provision is essentially all of the resources in the environment that have been provided by practitioners to extend the learning of the children in their care. Children are able to access these resources independently and safely, and use them to explore. They are chosen carefully and mindfully by the practitioner so that even in the absence of an adult the children are able to build upon learning. It is not shoving some toys out and watching the children fight over them. Each resource is carefully considered.

How is the provision planned for?

The provision is planned for with the characteristics of essential learning in mind. Development Matters (Non-statutory guidance supporting practitioners in the implementation of the statutory requirements of learning and development under the EYFS framework) defines the characteristics of essential learning as:

• Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’;
• Active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements; and
• Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

Each child is seen as an individual. Practitioners reflect on the ways in which individual children learn and respond to the environment and use this to inform their practice.

The Early Years Framework states:

 “Practitioners must consider the individual needs, interests, and stage of development of each child in their care. They must use this information to plan a challenging and enjoyable experience for each child, across all areas of learning and development.”

An important part of the provision provided is that it is never static and always changing. Good EY practitioners will ensure that the environment the children are accessing is planned for with the children’s interests in mind, as well as planning for next steps to build upon previous learning. The aim is always to engage each individual and move forward their learning. Areas in the environment are carefully monitored for use and engagement. Nothing is there for the sake of being there and looking pretty, engagement and learning is paramount.

How do adults engage with the provision?

Adults respond to the child in the moment, what they are doing and use that to extend the child’s learning. Continuous provision does not mean the adults relax and babysit the children engaging with the provision but rather they go in and be part of it. This is what can sometimes be hard for teachers within other key stages to understand as it is so different to standing at the front of a classroom and delivering! Although it is very different, it doesn’t make it less valid and actually a lot could be learnt from EY (expect a blog in the near future).

Sometimes these engagements in the environment between teacher and child can be planned for, but more often than not it becomes planning in the moment. This might be done via open questioning designed to promote higher order thinking. A child in the construction area for example, might want to make the tallest tower they can with the bricks available. A competent practitioner would ask open ended question to facilitate this, guiding them as they make choices and explore as well as reminding them what has been learned before and how that can be applied to the current situation. Practitioners also use these times for opportunities to model and support language development by referring back to vocabulary and using it themselves in the correct context. Alongside this is the making observations of focus children and using this to inform both the ever growing and changing picture of the child and future planning for the class as a whole. Effective practitioners move through various spaces ensuring they are supporting and developing learning throughout the environment whilst also ensuring each particular area is child ready throughout the day.

How is provision used to enable learning?

The framework tells us that, “Settings should provide a ‘challenging’ and ‘developmentally appropriate’ environment ‘based on children’s interests.” Effective provision allows each child to move at pace appropriate to their learning. Purposeful play means children are constantly challenging themselves in an environment that has been designed for that very purpose. Children are given the time, space and support to engage with a variety of activities that have been effectively planned for to extend their stage of development by both scaffolding and pushing their learning forward.

Purposeful play means children are constantly challenging themselves in an environment that has been designed for that very purpose. Share on X

I recently tweeted the below to highlight some of the incredible provision the reception class teacher at my school provides for children to develop and strengthen hands to aid in the writing process.

This activity and others like this are appropriate for the children developmentally, purposeful and engaging. It will provide the foundations needed to write. It is one small example of how purposeful play promotes the necessary skills that create and lay the foundations for school life.

There is a reason why it is called ‘foundation stage’.

Are you worried about your pupils revising for their science GCSE?

I have secured another deal. Please do direct your pupils to this site for the deal at the end of this blog from @TheScienceBreak

 

In 2012 when I made the first of my GCSE science videos on Youtube, there were very few, if any people are doing GCSE science videos. That fact, combined with students connecting with the teaching style, meant the channel grew fast. 

Fast forward to now, and there is a lot of choices when it comes to getting help for GCSE science. One issue that remains, however, is finding quality resources produced by teachers, for specific exams boards, that have exam question practice as well as good video tutorials that have exact and concise content. 

When building our website, the key for us was doing what we know best. Creating a set of comprehensive resources, all in one place, that can be used to learn and practice everything needed for GCSE science. We are also very aware that students have different gaps in their knowledge compared to each other and that students learn in different ways. 

The Science Break takes these differences between students into account and gives students the flexibility to learn what they need when they need it, whether it is the entire course or just a few topics here and there. There are carefully explained videos, many of which contain exam practice. There are multiple-choice and short answer questions for every single video and revision notes sheets. And coming soon, topic tests that give real exam-style questions, with answers and associated guidance. The Science Break has been created with the foundation of a lot of experience combined with a lot of work to bring you one of the top GCSE Science revision resources on the internet. 

So how does it work? 

All the videos are listed by subject and topic and can be found quickly, easily and can be viewed as many times as needed. Videos can be watched in interactive mode where there are in-built multiple choice questions and short answer free-response questions. Or they can be viewed without the interactivity and at up to 2x speed. It might sound strange to think about watching at double speed, but it is a very highly requested feature! A quick word about the multiple-choice questions. Each video has 6 of them, each with five options to choose from; This was carefully thought out. The purpose of the multiple-choice questions is two-fold. 

1. It gives the student an idea of the content of the video but importantly, it provides the student with learning ‘hooks’ that help maximise recall of the video content. 

2. The questions reappear at the end of the tutorial so that the student has a second go at them, having seen the tutorial. At the end, the student gets a before and after score, an explanation of the answers and a summary of the total score for the video assessment. There is a ton of learning is just doing the multiple-choice questions. 

And furthermore, there are going to be multiple choice questions in the real exam. So this feature alone is excellent practice. 

The video tutorials themselves are carefully planned, recorded and edited by a very experienced and very successful secondary school science teacher. 

This from a parent after the 2019 results: “All 9s! The only 9s she got. All thanks to you.”

and this from a student: “thank you for creating the website, I’ve found it incredibly helpful.” Sudina who got grade 9, 9, 9 in 2019.

Coming very soon are topic tests written to assess, at exam level, whole topics. ‘It’s not good enough to have a test for each video and say that there are exam-style questions. Exam-style questions never test a narrow set of content. They go cross-content, so the topic tests provide real practice for exams. And they all come with detailed mark schemes that include guidance about the answers. 

You can see that there is a lot of help for GCSE Science here. 

But ‘that’s not all. Notes sheets that accompany each video allow students to work along with the video and have a quick reference or flashcards to recap on the topics. 

Excellent teaching, revision notes, practice questions and answers all help to ease the burden of learning GCSE science. 

And there is more. Our awesome revision planner which helps students to plan and keep up to date with their work. 

So, of course, the question is how much. 

The answer, with a discount from this site, is £25 for all three separate sciences and £15 for combined science. At the moment we only have AQA but Edexcel is in the works. 

And no, ‘that’s not an ongoing monthly cost – ‘it’s a one-off payment for a whole ‘year’s subscription. 

So, grab an access code and head over to TheScienceBreak.com and sign up. ‘We’ll send you instructions on how to sign up (although it is very easy).

Good luck! 

 

Leadership:

1. When communicating ensure that your position is not threatening, open and positive.

2. Be aware of your eye contact.

3. Use affirming gestures.

Leadership: 1. When communicating ensure that your position is not threatening, open and positive. 2. Be aware of your eye contact. 3. Use affirming gestures. Share on X

What do the above three sections mean?

Teachers are communication experts, and this development is as part of their day to day practice.

1. When communicating ensure that your position is not threatening, open and positive.

Your position is always important. Standing front on, squared shoulders is likely to be perceived as threatening. Towering over the respondent has a similar impact; the converse is also true. Sideways posture and getting below the eye line may be least threatening.

Mirroring is a commonly used tool. Mirroring is where any positive body language is mimicked. Gestures are subtly copied; this increases engagement and connection.

2. Be aware of your eye contact.

Important. Ask yourself why we ask anyone to make eye contact? To show they are paying attention. Where does this construct originate?

It is problematic; a multitude of people will find eye contact difficult. There is also a cultural aspect here. Eye contact with people in authority in my culture is rude, be aware of this.

3. Use affirming gestures. (Active Listening)

Listen to the words, sum up and repeat the main points. Support this by:

a) Use gestures to show attention. Head nods, eyebrow raises, etc. Use questions to check.

b) Use open question being careful not to lead.

c) Be aware of feelings and emotions.

d) Confirm understanding regularly.

Teachers before even thinking about approaching any research, we must be humble enough to interrogate our 

1. Ontology and epistemology. 
2. Personal experiences.

What is this Pran? Why are you always using terminology that makes us want to fall asleep?

In simple terms, ontology is the stance we take on how we accept knowledge. Epistemology is the method at which we recognise that knowledge.

Teachers before even thinking about approaching any research, we must be humble enough to interrogate our Ontology and epistemology. Personal experiences. Share on X

Examples of Epistemological and Ontology.

Positivistic – This is where we accept knowledge has a definite answer. This object is this big; it weighs this much, etc. 

Relativistic/Post Positivistic – There is no ultimate truth; the truth depends on the different viewpoints and interpretations of the observers.

‘This [Positivistic] approach assumes that reality is objective, transcending an individual perspective, and that it is expressed in the statistical regularities of behaviour.’ (Wildemuth 1993) The positivistic view described is challenged by the relativistic view of research, where relativist approaches ‘assumes that reality is subjective and is socially constructed’. 

As a physics graduate, the above resonates. As an educator, I had to accept that we cannot take a solely positivistic stance. Human beings are not objects with fixed attributes. I have accepted that as a result:

‘Evidence in research is always imperfect and fallible’. (Phillips and Burbles 2000 pp 29-34 in Real World Research, Robson p22).

It may be correct to state ‘correlation is not causation’; however, we must have the awareness to back that up with a critical analysis. When working with humans, no correlation signifies causation. We have to create boundaries in what we willingly accept. I’ll write about Karl Popper’s scientific method at some point.

Without acknowledging these boundaries, how do we negate the impact of cognitive biases? Anchoring, group-think, etc. (Great blog on these biases from Ross McGill here)

Personal Experiences

What we accept as knowledge is dynamic. What we perceive is commonly tainted by our previous experiences. The way learner’s evaluates lessons is often through their legacy of teaching they have had. Let me say that again the legacy of a learner’s journey impacts the evaluation of teaching and learning.

Learners have preconceived ideas around delivery from their own experiences ‘Such a mismatch may lead to lack of motivation, adoption of surface learning approaches, resistance to certain teaching activities that do not align with their beliefs, and learning ineffectiveness or discontinuation of study.’ (Brown 2009)

If you have a set of beliefs that around lesson delivery this may impact your engagement as a learner. For example,

‘Students with memorisation-for-reproduction beliefs tend to have negative learning experiences in higher education and are uncomfortable with teaching approaches that do not correspond with their beliefs (Kember 2001).

This has a huge impact on learning and outcomes, this is more important than the curriculum taught and content design.

Looking at the impact of these beliefs on learners is impressive; the misalignment of beliefs, the impact of such can have a more significant impact on learning approaches than the course design. (Campbell et al. 2001).

Teachers, leaders, and learners have a predetermined perception around what good teaching looks like; this means that you may prefer education styles from the ones you received. You may teach in the same fashion and this may end up being at ends with your workplace.

This is the same when we use evidence-informed research. Which research are you accepting as part of the canon?

This is echoed by this EEF rreport,

“This briefing provides a useful indication of current levels of teacher research engagement across English schools. It suggests that academic research still has only a small to moderate influence on teachers’ decision-making relative to other sources and indicates that there is still work to do to maximise the benefits of research in school practices. Results show that there is a willingness among teachers to engage with research evidence and also that many schools have climates which are supportive of evidence use, so it appears that there is a promising base upon which to build. Currently, however, teachers are most likely to draw on their own expertise, or that of their colleagues, when making decisions about teaching and learning or whole-school change. 

How do we disrupt our thinking? 

An interrogation of:

• Teacher’s own experiences. What have you been subjected to?
• Their ontology and epistemology. How do accept some research as knowledge and discard other as not knowledge worth knowing?

To appreciate the real value of research – teachers and leaders would ameliorate personal resistance to change – through the above factors in both the journey of the pupils and the journey of the teachers.

Further Reading

Xiangdong Li (2018) Teaching beliefs and learning beliefs in translator and interpreter education: an exploratory case study, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 12:2, 132-151, DOI: 10.1080/1750399X.2017.1359764

Click to access Teachers_engagement_with_research_Research_Brief_JK.pdf

Guest Post: Anon

I have wanted to write this for a long time.  In reality, finding the strength has been the problem.  I have been teaching for over 20 years and I thought I had seen it all. You should also know I set my standards really high and have had an impeccable career. I truly loved being a teacher, I was rarely ill.  However, one incident at school left me with PTSD, a breakdown and having to leave the job I love for a while to give myself time to recover. At one point I didn’t know if I could return to the profession again.

In my pastoral role, this was a year I wouldn’t wish on anyone: sadly, two students attempted to take their own lives.  I have PTSD now as a result of a child’s cry for help.

Anon: In my pastoral role, this was a year I wouldn’t wish on anyone: sadly, two students attempted to take their own lives. I have PTSD now as a result of a child’s cry for help. Share on X

Immediately after the events had taken place, I was offered initial support and took it.  However, over time I found I was suffering from post-traumatic stress as I was reliving the experience and having flashbacks day in day out.  I asked for help from those above; nothing came. At the time, I felt there was a lack of understanding, I needed specialist support in PTSD and trauma. I do not blame the school, they were managing a very unusual situation and doing what they thought was right. However slowly my mental health was deteriorating. I was not sleeping, not eating well and probably having far too many G and T’s.

On reflection, there were tell-tale signs I wasn’t coping, and I am reminded of a time before I was signed off. I was supporting some students during break and lunch who were having a hard time, offering them a safe space to be, as I often have done throughout my career.  We were sat in the classroom, I was doing some work and I hadn’t realised I was humming, until one of the students asked, “Are you alright Miss?” It was at this point I thought I had a problem.  Then in a matter of weeks, the shakes began, and my body physically began reacting. I was also reacting to loud noises; I would jump and shake.

I remember the day I broke down. I just couldn’t go on and the tears fell and fell and fell.  The only way I can explain it was everything just fell out of me. I was sent home and didn’t return.  The guilt was tremendous, I felt so guilty that I had let everyone down, and in particular, the students down as I wasn’t there to support them. But what I really needed to do was put some intense support for myself.

I remember the day I broke down. I just couldn’t go on and the tears fell and fell and fell.  The only way I can explain it was everything just fell out of me. I was sent home and didn’t return.  The guilt was tremendous, I felt so… Share on X

I financed my own specialist support as this wasn’t freely available.  At first, I couldn’t leave the house. I couldn’t hold a cup of coffee without making a mess: the shakes would be constant. A lot of the time all I could do was sit.  The recovery has been difficult, at times seemingly impossible. But I am happy to say I am now in a much better place.

My family were amazing and after a long, while I started to feel better, my sleeping improved, and the flashbacks stopped.  I still have triggers, but they are rare and from what I understand from PTSD and professionals, this is a normal occurrence and I have the knowledge to put things in place when I need to, and I do.

This isn’t an experience I have chosen to tell lightly. However, I feel it is so important that Senior Leaders take heed, listen and put support measures in place.  Since this has happened, I have spoken to other people in different professions, all of whom get support when serious traumatic events happen. From Social workers, employees in hospitals and people who work as reporters at child hearings.  When there has been a serious case that they have been dealing with they have supported both during and after the case; they are offered specialist counselling, time off and support to continue in their work.  What I am disappointed most by, considering our profession is all about caring for others, is that we do not have a standard process for supporting staff when they are on the frontline of supporting our young people through very difficult times.

As a Head of Year, a job I adored, it was a privilege to support young people from all backgrounds and experiences, and I have treasured memories of the differences I have made to young people.  There were many times I would go home and hurt for them: the disclosures of abuse I heard, the traumas they had been through.  The wait for social workers to come to provide the necessary support or indeed working with the police to support our young people.

Reflecting upon what I have been through, I realise that throughout my career I have never been offered any form of counselling or support to process what I, along with all teachers, have been dealing with at the time. What I am arguing for is a set process for the profession that needs to be followed to make sure we support the mental health of our staff as well as our students.

Now some people will say there is counselling you can access if you want it, often via a telephone, but for trauma, you need specialist help, and this isn’t always on offer.  I think there needs to be more trauma-informed practices that are set processes, meaning we are supporting staff to a gold standard.  The US leads the world having national policies in trauma-informed care and other countries worldwide are catching up.  I think that England needs to become more ‘trauma aware’.  Ultimately, we are educators, but we also provide a wealth of other support as well, something that often goes unnoticed by anyone who isn’t working in the profession.