The foundation stage curriculum, like its predecessor, is organised into six areas of learning to help practitioners plan appropriate activities and experiences for children in their setting. Yet the early learning goals guidance points out, 'This does not mean that all of a young children's learning is divided up into areas. One experience may provide a child with opportunities to develop a number of competencies and concepts across several areas of learning.'
Children's learning is complex, as is good practice within the early years, and practitioners need to heed this complexity in their cycle of planning for learning, observation and assessment. So what does complex, quality learning look like in practice?
Take the example of Natasha, Amandip, Joe and Abigail and the setting they attend. They have chosen to cook. Cookery is one of the activities that is on offer every day at their setting, where children are taught both directly and indirectly and there are ongoing discussions with parents about their child's learning.
What will Natasha (four and a half years), Amandip (three years one month), Joe (four years two months), Abigail (three and a half years) learn when they cook together?
It is 10am. Amandip has been outside playing in the sand pit. He is still sampling things, finding out where everything is located. This is his third week in the setting. He comes indoors and takes a look around, arriving at the cooking area. The practitioner asks 'Are you going to cook, Amandip?' He nods. 'Go and wash your hands then, and come back here.'
When he returns, the practitioner shows him the picture of the hand-washing in the cookery book she has made. She turns over the page, and shows him the picture she has drawn of the cutlery and cooking utensils that he will need. She helps him to find them on the shelf.
Meanwhile, Natasha has chosen her recipe. She has been in the setting for a year now and knows a great deal about cooking. At home she cooks Chinese food with her grandmother. In school she independently makes European cakes and biscuits. She turns the pages and does what each page instructs in simple pictures and words. She washes her hands and puts on her apron.
Looking at the next page she gathers her utensils and turns over and 'reads' which ingredients to collect. She uses the book to guide her as she measures four spoons of flour and two spoons of sugar and breaks an egg. She knows she must use a metal spoon for measuring and a plastic spoon for mixing. She can draw round the tin and cut out the greaseproof paper circle to line the cake tin. She goes with the adult to put the cake in the oven, returning with the adult later on to take it out. She knows about hot ovens and patty pans and is careful not to touch.
Joe is working alongside Natasha. He needs a few prompts from the adult. For example, he turns over two pages at once. He needs help in how to hold down the patty pan as he greases the sections to take his fairy cakes. He needs reminding that you do not need to grease the entire patty pan when making fairy cakes.
Abigail has chosen to make biscuits. She is rolling out her picture and choosing her cutters. She wants cutters with a crinkly pattern on the edge rather than smooth, round biscuits. She pauses to watch the other children, and then returns to rolling out the mixture. She works slowly and in spurts. She is there after the other children have finished, and have gone to wash up their utensils and return them to the shelves and drawers in the cookery area.
She chats away to the other children and the adult about all sorts of things, both related and unrelated to cooking, that she went to see her gran again, that she went swimming, that she will take her biscuits home and eat them, and who she will share them with.
Indirect learning/teaching
Carefully planned material provision in the cooking corner helps these children learn across the six areas of learning set out in the Early Learning Goals document. The utensils are out on open shelves, with easy access, labelled with words and pictures on the shelf. The ingredients are set out in a similar way with large, easily held, and stable containers. Children know they use metal cutlery from one drawer to measure and cut. They know they use wooden or plastic spoons from another drawer to mix. Another drawer contains cutters and another has rolling pins in it.
Spontaneous conversations between adults and children, and among the children, support learning and teaching indirectly.
Direct learning/teaching
Showing children how to develop skills and introducing them to experiences extends learning through direct teaching. Children learn about:
1 personal, social and emotional development
2 communication, language and literacy
3 mathematics
4 knowledge and understanding of the world
5 physical development
6 creative development
Natasha, whose first language is Chinese, will move into Year 1, Key Stage 1, next term. She is learning science, about transforming different materials such as flour, sugar and eggs, and how they behave. She is learning about correct procedures in science, and how ingredients turn into a cake when subjected to heat.
She is learning about literacy, reading simple texts supported with pictures, learning the direction of English print and that print carries meaning.
She is learning mathematics, sequences in cooking, counting spoonfuls, making circles with greaseproof paper.
She is developing physically. She can use a pencil appropriately, drawing around the tin to get the right size of circle.
She co-ordinates this deftly, and she can use scissors to cut round, which is not an easy thing to do.
Natasha's personal, social and emotional development is well served in this activity. She is confident, which gives a good self-image. Her self-esteem is high because she is so competent. Self-confidence will spill over into other areas and help her when she tries out activities which challenge her more.
Amandip needs massive support from adults and direct teaching throughout the activity, or he would give up and walk away. It is important that he is given teaching at this point, so that, although it is very challenging for him to cook his chocolate crispie, he experiences success. This is more likely to make him return, which will help him to consolidate his learning.
Amandip is learning about books and how they can be used (language and literacy).
He is struggling to count his spoonfuls (mathematics).
The adult knows about progression in cookery, so he has suggested Amandip makes a crispie, so that he sees the mathematical sequence easily as he cooks in a saucepan over a night light in a stand. The whole sequence takes place in the cookery area, which helps him to keep the thread of events without moving away from the oven. He can mix the ingredients, cook them and put them in the cake paper, all in one sequence. This is a common activity in Scottish nurseries.
Joe, finally, is consolidating his learning. Especially important to Joe is accurate counting and using the recipe book in the correct sequence (mathematics and literacy).
The physical co-ordination of using the utensils and seeing the ingredients transformed in science are also involving Joe in deep learning.
And creativity? Joe, Amandip and Natasha are more involved in performing set scientific procedures, but Abigail is creating different shaped biscuits and putting sultana decorations on them. She is a creative cook.
Cookery provides children with plenty of opportunities to learn across several areas of learning.
It is heartening to find that the Early Learning Goals Document supports time-honoured traditional early childhood curriculum practices such as cookery, while giving us all new insights into why cookery is important.
With thanks to Southway Nursery School in Bedford for this example of an activity. Natasha can be seen cooking in the BBC video called 'Tuning in to Children'. This is available from BBC Educational Developments (01937 840 206).
Tina Bruce is a visiting professor at the University of North London and a member of the QCA working party advising on the new curriculum framework for the foundation stage.