that teachers think of is the trusty sticker – stars, footballs, monsters, fairies, etc. The problem here is that this favourite can soon prove divisive. Almost as soon as the sticker has hit the school jumper you can hear the other children in the near vicinity asking for stickers too, and then the clamour begins, and the questioning and the general sense of unfairness that 9/10 times ensues. And it’s usually those children who don’t necessarily day-in-day-out deserve a sticker that are the quickest to be rewarded for doing things that the rest of the class do without prompting.
A more preferable solution is to use the class charter as the starting point and introduce a class reward system. This way the children are working as a collaborative team to ensure that they explore and make decisions for the collective good. As soon as you catch children making the choices that you have agreed in your charter, then you award them, not as an individual but as a whole. In my own setting we use go-gos, small brightly coloured plastic aliens that are stored in a see-through pot. Next to this pot is another pot to which go-gos are transferred one by one for acts of positive behaviour. As soon as the pot is empty, the class gets some reward whether it be bubbles, sitting on a whoopee cushion, a go with a light sabre, being sprayed in the face with water – whatever thing makes them laugh and know that they have done a Good Thing. It’s an incredibly powerful way to ensure that children see themselves as part of something bigger than being an individual.
‘Children waiting for the day they feel good/Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday/Made to feel the way that every child should/Sit and listen, sit and listen/Went to school and I was very nervous No one knew me, no one knew me ...’– Mad World, Tears For Fears
This is where your boundaries, high expectations and collective reward system combine to meet all these developmental needs while at the same time hopefully being open to some laughter and a sense of fun along the way. And children thrive on fun, on being happy and safe. You have created a perfect positive storm in preparation for the terms ahead in which children can explore and investigate within a structure that recognises them as people first and foremost. They feel rewarded for their demonstrations of operating within their agreed systems and are housed in a clear and unfussy room which enables them to think, feel and be.
Alongside all of this lies you as the model. The boundaries that you have created with the children need to be followed by you. If you have agreed with the children that ‘indoor voices’ need to be used because the children want a quiet indoor environment, you yourself as the adult need to follow their rule too. This means no shouting across the space to get children’s attention or barking commands as the children line up. You need to model the expectations children have agreed on. If you don’t, then the children will quickly see through you and begin to question why they should need to behave within the boundaries too. It’s a very subtle thing that happens here and if children begin to have their respect for you eroded, it can be very difficult to win back. Get it right from day one and you give yourself the best chance to create something wonderful for your children, the memory of which will stay with them for a long time and, who knows, it may even stay with you too.
‘In this elegant chaos I stand to one side ...’ Julian Cope
The two words ‘day one’ in that last sentence are really important. All too often there’s a rush to assess, monitor and find a baseline. Yes, starting points are critical if we are to understand children’s Next Steps, but this needs to come from the Early Years practitioner not via pressure from further up the school or just because that’s what the school do at a certain point in the school year. You need time to make relationships, create the charter, allow children to find their feet, enable them to make friends, and for them to grow into the universe that you have created for and with them. And yes, tracking progress is a useful element of ensuring that your children are being challenged and are thriving, but often this is an expectation based on the desire for data outcomes rather than the well-being of children. Get well-being right and data will follow, so give yourself time to make this happen and wherever possible resist the thumbscrew of scrutiny that dogs our KS1/2 colleagues.
Part 2 Getting Continuous Provision Right
Introduction
Continuous Provision and getting it right is the most integral part of your day. Get it wrong and children cannot progress but rather stagnate in an environment that offers little challenge or opportunity. Get it right and you give your children the very best start and an atmosphere in which they can thrive. Continuous Provision must be skills based, open ended, collaborative and neutral. It must engage, provoke and facilitate learning.
So how do we get it right?
First, we need to give ourselves a break – an actual break. We have to step back and remove ourselves from the cycle of coming in to school first thing and setting up the Continuous Provision. More often than not, we arrive and busy ourselves in trying to make each area of provision purposeful and attractive, which is all commendable but what we’re actually doing here is putting a cap on learning. We are limiting children to our choices. We are not enabling – we are unconsciously telling children what they can experience and explore.
If I like playing in the water and want to explore its journey down ramps or through pipes but the adult has meticulously set up the zone with dinosaurs and a selection of rocks and pebbles with a plastic island in the middle all bedecked with foam numbers, can I as a child explore that zone as I wish? Is the adult not interpreting the space even before I have arrived with my childish imagination and dreams? We need to step away from the Continuous Provision and allow children the freedom to interpret. So, first things first, when you come in to school or your setting stop yourself from ‘setting up’. Rather spend the time carrying out a Continuous Provision audit. Interrogate your Continuous Provision. Ask yourself the following questions:
Does it promote the skills that I know my children need to develop?
Does it tie in with interests that I have seen or heard my children talk about?
Is it appealing to both boys and girls?
To do this, you need to invest your time not in planning sheets or carefully setting up tables, but rather in shelving units.
Each area of Continuous Provision is most effective when it is open ended
To achieve this, you need to display a range of resources that children can freely access (and return) so that rather than setting up, you are setting out.
Use whatever containers you feel are appropriate: if you are a homely person consider wicker baskets; if you are an Ikea goddess, then what better excuse for a trip than the acquisition of new plastic boxes or baskets? Neutral colours are, of course, best because you remove the danger of appealing only to one gender (although most boys deep down seem to love pink). Ultimately, you are looking for ways to effectively display a wide range of resources that the children can access and then introduce by themselves in to the provision. If you have a group of children who love dinosaurs, then consider a basket of these alongside a stack of wooden blocks, both of which are displayed on the shelving unit in the provision area. The children will select the dinosaurs and perhaps build a den or volcano from the blocks, but if these resources are in the Play-Doh, they will just as likely explore the dough with the dinosaurs, use it as cement for the blocks, or indeed interpret it in multiple ways. Suddenly, you are encouraging children to apply their imagination into their world. Your neatly set-up dino world on the Play-Doh table will only appeal to the dinosaur lovers, pretty much instantly closing it down to any child who might just want to explore the Play-Doh itself or get creative with Play-Doh cakes.
Chapter 3 What Play is and What Play Isn’t
