Planning in the Moment with Young Children

A Practical Guide for Early Years Practitioners and Parents

Anna Ephgrave

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351625227
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Young children live in the here and now. If adults are to make a real difference to their learning they need to seize the moments when children first show curiosity, and support their next steps immediately. This book embraces the concept of planning "in the moment" and emphasises the critical role of the adult in promoting child-led learning, giving early years practitioners the confidence and insight to work and plan in the moment, and enabling the children in their care to live, learn, play and develop in the here and now.

Planning in the Moment with Young Children maintains a strong link to practice, providing numerous examples of how practitioners can integrate spontaneous planning and rich adult–child interactions into their everyday practice and early years curricula. From timetabling to setting clear rules, creating enabling environments, keeping records and making use of a variety of materials, the book demonstrates the multitude of ways in which practitioners can encourage child autonomy and respond to the unique needs of each child. Examples from practice are rooted in theory, fully contextualised, and exemplified by original documentation sourced from the author's own experiences and from a wide variety of settings.

Key features include:

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• over 180 full colour photographs to illustrate practice;

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• photocopiable pages including planning sheets, documentation and activity sheets;

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• advice on working with parents, individual children and groups;

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• tailored guidance on working with children at different stages of development from birth to age 6 years;

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• relevance to a range of settings, including childminders, pre-schools, nurseries and schools.

When children are allowed to select where, with what, and how to play, they are truly invested in their play, they become deeply involved and make dramatic progress. This book is an outstanding testament to a responsive and child-led way of working in early years environments. Practitioners will be guided, inspired and supported to work spontaneously and reactively – planning as they go and celebrating the results!

1 Brain development

The vision

If you visited a “utopian” setting, what would you notice about the children?

This is one of the first questions that I ask any group of practitioners – be they parents, childminders, pre-school staff, nursery nurses, teachers or headteachers. It applies whether the children are four months old or 18 years old. The answer is always the same. The first thing indicating that a setting is working is that the children are ENGAGED. Throughout this book, whenever the word “engaged” is used, it refers to Level 5 involvement as described by Ferre Laevers – see Appendix A. Many other words are then listed – the children are happy, independent, confident, unique, taking risks, taking the lead, communicating, challenged, creative, secure, curious, persistent, sociable, enthusiastic, empathic and so on.

However, it soon becomes clear that engagement is the key indicator. For example, a child who is not happy cannot become deeply engaged. A child who is not challenged by what is on offer will not be engaged. A child who is being controlled by adults will not be as deeply engaged. A child who feels insecure (for whatever reason) will not be able to become deeply engaged.

We know intuitively that our vision is to get all children engaged. Our intuition is justified and now we need to articulate the underlying rationale for this belief: When children are deeply engaged, their brain is developing and new synapses are forming – i.e. they are making progress.

We also know that a child who is bored, passive, quiet and not engaged is not making progress – their brain is not growing when in that state. We do not need to carry out an experiment to prove this. Brain scans clearly demonstrate this and the long-term effects of low engagement have been demonstrated in the case of the Romanian orphans born during the 1970s and 1980s. Although these children were able to learn to read and write at a later stage in their lives, their ability to empathise and form relationships has proved almost impossible. There are two main points to conclude from this; that lack of engagement hinders brain development, and also the need to focus on social skills and empathy at a young age because this is very difficult to develop later.

We must also recognise and believe that every child wants to be engaged. If we have children who are not engaged, we cannot blame them. We must look to see what we can do to engage them. The work of Professor Ferre Laevers is complimented by the work of Bowlby and supports the approach and beliefs that I observe in practitioners all over the world. This can be presented in various ways but, in simple terms, babies need to form trusting relationships at a young age. This then allows them to be in a “secure” state, in which their natural desire to learn and develop can be optimised. Anything which disrupts this state will alter the chemical make-up in the brain and hinder development. Thus, the developmentally inappropriate practice of formalised, adult-led learning that is being imposed on so many young children is actually preventing the very development that these practices are supposed to promote.

Not engaged – Level 1 involvement Engaged – Level 5 involvement

Levels of involvement

Ferre Laevers developed descriptors for various levels of involvement and these can be used as a simple, objective way of measuring the engagement of an individual, group or class. The descriptors are given in Appendix A. I have often shown these to external inspectors and their response is that the Level 5 (with concentration, creativity, energy and persistence) is equivalent to an “outstanding” grade.

There are many ways in which these levels of involvement can be used, as outlined below.

Individual children

As mentioned above, we start with the assumption that all children want to be engaged, i.e. they want to be at Level 5. In a superb setting, if a child is not becoming engaged, then the descriptors can be used to monitor a child at regular intervals throughout a day or a week in order to uncover patterns or preferences. Always bear in mind with such a child that there might be external factors causing emotional well-being to be affected, and remember that a child with poor emotional well-being is not able to become deeply engaged. However, such monitoring can be a powerful way to see which sessions or events do engage a child and which clearly do not. Starting with the assumption that they do want to be engaged, it is then possible to see which types of session are “working” for the particular child.

Groups or class

The same descriptors can be used to consider group or whole class sessions. Again, assuming that we are aiming to deliver practice that will see most children at Level 4 or 5, we can quickly start to see which sessions or events are appropriate and productive, in terms of engagement/involvement (and, therefore, progress). For example, if we are delivering an input on the carpet, then we should have the level descriptors in mind. When the children start to fidget and become distracted, then this tells us that the session has become unproductive. It does not tell us that the children are “naughty” or that “they can’t concentrate” or that “they have ADHD”. It tells us that what we are offering is not engaging and therefore is not supporting synapse formation and learning. Once we accept this, it is clear that group sessions for babies are rarely appropriate. Equally, carpet sessions that are longer than a few minutes are not appropriate for three year olds. Assembly for Reception children is not going to deliver engagement and nor are lengthy phonic sessions for a child at any age. I would also urge practitioners to use these levels to measure the effectiveness of focussed tasks, snack time, circle time and so on. In all these cases, the level of involvement is often very low, the adults and children can become quite stressed and the learning is minimal. It is, then, a very useful tool for practitioners to use as a way of assessing practice and then arguing for change.

Environment

The levels can also be used to see which areas of an environment are “working” – which areas are delivering good levels of involvement and which are not. This is an ongoing process, particularly with some age groups, as their interests and stage of development can change dramatically over the course of a few months. However, some areas are always engaging and others rarely so. Also, the levels of involvement will help practitioners see which areas are rarely, if ever, used. Such areas obviously need to be changed as they are essentially “wasted space”. Chapter 3 on environment gives detailed information and ideas to support the development of an environment that is engaging.

A section of an outdoor area where the levels of involvement were low.

Involvement levels improved dramatically once the area was developed.

Resources

I would recommend using the levels as a way of assessing the effectiveness of resources. Whether or not there is a large budget, it is best to have mainly resources which are open-ended and can therefore be used in many different ways. For example, for small world play, rather than having a pirate ship, a doll’s house, a castle, a rocket, a caravan, a farm and a car park for the children to use, there is far more potential for engagement with wooden blocks, Lego, pieces of fabric, paper and pens etc. In this way, the children can create their own rocket, car park, castle and so on. Again, further details can be found in Chapter 3.

Child-initiated play – autonomy and genuine choice

So how do we achieve the best levels of involvement? I have worked with children since the age of 13. I grew up in the Woodcraft Folk and, at 13 years old, was organising a group for six to ten year olds. This voluntary work continued for over 30 years. I also had a baby while studying at university and a second baby a couple of years later. When my children were very young, I work...