Enabling environments

9. Make sure key staff are well informed and experienced in Early Years, Child Development and current initiatives

“Early Years practitioners develop their practice through training, gaining high-level qualifications, experience, research, and personal reflection which impacts on their attitudes, knowledge, skills and interactions with children. In order to improve the quality of learning, playing and interacting, it is necessary to look with a spotlight through the layers of what practitioners are accustomed to, and focus clearly on the impact on children. … The critical role of a skilled adult in supporting children’s learning is enhanced when practitioners understand how their practices affect children’s development as resilient, independent thinkers and learners, as well as how they gain new concepts, knowledge and skills.” 

Challenging practice to further Improve Learning, Playing and Interacting

To what extent do you:

  • know about attachment theory and its impact on behaviour, and use this knowledge to inform practice and provision?
  • model, promote and provide further information if necessary to all EYFS practitioners, senior leaders and parents, advocating why play-based learning and child-centred pedagogy is vital to the development of early years children?
  • ensure that all practitioners have a thorough knowledge of early child development and use this to scaffold learning effectively?
  • value the learning process itself over end products, modelling and encouraging children to use the language of learning?
  • implement the statutory requirement to use regular supervision with all EYFS practitioners to support and challenge practice?
How do you use the characteristics of effective learning to nurture children’s self-esteem and independence and to foster self-regulation and resilience? Discuss as a staff. Are there missed opportunities that you could utilise in the future?

Resources

EYFS Profile Handbook - Responsible Pedagogy

  • “Responsible pedagogy enables each child to demonstrate learning in the fullest sense. It depends on the use of assessment information to plan relevant and motivating learning experiences for each child. Effective assessment can only take place when children have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding, learning and development in a range of contexts. Children must have access to a rich learning environment where opportunities and conditions allow them to flourish in all aspects of their development.”

Challenging practice to further improve learning, playing and interacting in the EYFS

  • Useful for leaders and managers to support and challenge the Early Years workforce, to further raise the quality of learning and teaching in the EYFS; to improve provision and to develop practitioner understanding of pedagogy.

Supporting Self-Esteem

  • Infographic to support practitioners in understanding self-esteem and making small changes to provision to enhance children’s self-esteem.  This resource supports practitioners to better understand children who present with low self-esteem, unpicking possible reasons and highlighting the importance of consistency; positive self-talk and the concept of professional love.

Supporting Tranitions in the Early Years - Teach Early Years

  • Change can be a daunting prospect, so how do we ease the process of transition throughout a child’s early years? Anjali Patel of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) explains in this informative article.

Are you ready? Good practice in school readiness - Ofsted 

Brain development and transitions

  • A factsheet presenting the advances to our understanding of brain development in the early years and the difficulty of separation during transitions (fight, flight or freeze).

Attachment Aware Schools

The Complete Introduction to Early Years Pedagogy – FAMLY

  • Provides an easy to access overview of six influential early years pedagogies, and explores implications for practice.

Leicestershire’s Early Years Supervision Toolkit

  • Resources including templates to support carrying out and documenting supervisions and appraisals.

10. Create a learning environment which is welcoming, safe and suitable for everyone’s needs.

Maria Montessori said, “Adults admire their environment; they can remember it and think about it – but a child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear.”

“The impact of children’s surroundings on their development is well-documented. Friedrich Froebel (early 1800s) compared designing an environment for children to planning an organic and ever-changing garden which can inspire and guide children’s imagination and behaviour.”

My Space, Creating enabling environments for young children

To what extent do you:

  • adapt the school day to ensure that routines and timetables are flexible and inclusive to the needs of the children in your current cohort?Does the school fit around the child rather than the child needing to adapt to the school?
  • provide continuity of care and a familiar adult during break, lunch and PPA times?
  • safeguard children with unusual patterns of attendance?Are you familiar with Leicestershire’s best practice CME guidance?  Are you clear what should happen if a child of non-statutory school age does not arrive for settling in visits/meetings, take up their place or has periods of absence?
  • know about and use the concept of “professional love” to support the emotional environment?
  • enable children to access the outdoors throughout the whole of the school day and across the year, allowing them to experience weathers across the seasons?
How easy is it for all children to access a range of tools, equipment and resources independently both indoors and outside and to what extent are they encouraged to lead their own learning during a typical day?

Resources

Auditing EYFS environment, practice and provision – Herefordshire County Council
Auditing documents and resources to help schools and settings assess and improve their provision against the standards of the EYFS framework.

Ingredients of active learning - The HighScope Approach

  • “Building independence, decision-making, creativity, problem-solving, and academic skills.”
    Children’s interest in learning is ignited by creating an environment that encourages them to explore learning materials and interact with adults and peers.  The focus is placed on supporting learners as they make decisions, build academic skills, develop socially and emotionally, and become part of a classroom community.  Active learning is at the centre of the HighScope approach which focuses mainly on young infants and toddlers… but it is also very relevant to reception children. It provides a useful audit to evaluate provision.

5 Ingredients of active learning – article by Shannon Lockhart, HighScope

Active learning audit

Communication Friendly Spaces – Elizabeth Jarman

  • Elizabeth Jarman challenges thinking about the way spaces are organised, aligned to latest research into brain development, physicality and learning, skills acquisition and interpersonal connectivity, to create highly effective and intellectually active spaces.

More than teddy bears

  • Article exploring the importance of transitional objects 

Thinking about the concept of ‘Professional Love’

  • Five-step triangular model of thinking about ‘professional love’ in the early years offering practitioners a process to complement a parent’s love for their child.

Well-being and Involvement

  • The scales of well-being and involvement developed by Ferre Laevers can be utilised by early years practitioners to ensure that they are providing the right environment both emotionally and physically for learning to take place.  This provides information and resources for practitioners, explaining how to observe and acknowledge indicators of a child’s well-being.

Children Missing Education - Leicestershire guidance

  • Essential safeguarding guidance to support schools in identifying and maintaining contact with children missing, or at risk of going missing, from education.

Sensory Processing - Berkshire Early Years toolkit

Creating an enabling environment – Optimus Education

  • A short guide to the principles of creating an enablingSensory processing Berkshire Early years toolkit environment, this contains practical ideas to enhance both the physical environment and the resources you provide for children to play with and explore.

Mind the Gap – Supporting Children through Transition

  • Produced by The Early Years Inclusion and Childcare Service, ‘Mind the Gap’ is a set of booklets which are full of ideas and guidance for childcare providers to help children through transition. The pack is full of simple ideas to help make transitions as stress free as possible.

Booklet 6 - Curriculum Learning and Development - Cover 

Booklet 6 - Curriculum Learning and Development - Inner  

My Space: Creating enabling environments for young children – Oxfordshire County Council

  • One of these principles of the EYFS is Enabling Environments. My space offers support and inspiration to help practitioners put this principle into practice. This booklet considers the environment under 3 separate headings: The Emotional Environment, The Indoor Environment and The Outdoor Environment.  This guidance encourages self-evaluation with a strong emphasis on consideration of the child’s perspective.