The Thomas Coram Early Childhood Centre enjoys excellent resources and premises specially designed for children, but central to its high quality provision is the thought that staff give to planning, which is refined by their continuing observation of the children's development.
Opportunities for observation are built in to the daily routines, and time is also set aside for staff to talk with parents, to share thinking with colleagues, and to review their practice.
Janice Marshall, who is deputy head and special needs co-ordinator, has overall responsibility for the youngest children at the Centre. She monitors the records kept for all children aged up to three, reading the notes of the keyworkers' observations, and looking at samples and photographs of the children's activities in their big record books, where paintings and photographs of other work in progress are mounted.
The big books grow into a detailed record of children's progress, which families are invited to keep as a memento of their child's time at the nursery. As well as the child's name and the date, all the selected examples are annotated using a common format, which indicates the social context, who initiated the activity and the level of adult input.
The examples are analysed under the headings in Birth to Three Matters to illustrate each child's progress towards becoming a strong and healthy child who is a competent learner and a skilful communicator.
Because staff refer consistently to the Birth to Three Matters framework as they analyse their record keeping, their level of understanding and confidence in its use is growing. Ms Marshall checks their records and plans and provides regular feedback to all the keyworkers as a contribution to their wider professional development.
Planning process
The planning process draws on the knowledge that staff build up of their key children, which also enables them to contribute to plans for the wider group. Plans incorporate outdoor and indoor activities, and are subsequently filed as evidence for future audits of provision.
Learning priorities
Learning priorities are identified for each child, in consultation with parents and carers. The children's needs and interests are noted, and potential avenues of exploration identified. These usually link common interests, and therefore apply to a group of children. This process enables the staff to prepare resources, including rhymes, stories and pictures, and to plan possible visits, so that they are ready to respond to children's developing thinking, and extend their experience appropriately.
Weekly planning
The weekly planning format for the whole group outlines an agreed focus and specifies what the adults will be introducing. Each of the proposed avenues for exploration is analysed according to the knowledge and understanding, skills, and attitudes and dispositions that staff intend the children to acquire and develop.
Schemas
The possibilities are often linked to children's observed engagement with particular schemas, or patterns of behaviour. For example, when Daniel's keyworker saw his fascination with a marble run, she encouraged him to roll a bigger ball across the floor, to construct a slope that wheeled toys could roll down, and to experiment with putting a ball into a sloping tube in the garden. His delight when it appeared at the bottom and then rolled along the grass led to questions about where it had been when it disappeared.
The Centre provides a short parent's guide to schemas, which explains that they are important strategies that children use to help them make sense of the world.
Common patterns of behaviour may be shown through varied activities involving rotation, transporting or enveloping and enclosing, for instance.
As the leaflet points out, children need to experience a variety of stimulating activities that will nourish and support their dominant schemas. This is consistent with findings reported in the research on effective pedagogy in the early years, drawn from the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project.
The opportunity to share ideas means that parents and staff can collaborate in the process of providing relevant and worthwhile activities, while coming to understand and enjoy the children's preoccupations.
When Daniel's parents realised that he was fascinated by rotation and movement, they were patient with his apparent obsession with pushing pebbles down the path to their door. They also taught him how to dribble a football, and had fun practising rolling the ball to and fro at different speeds.
Curriculum statement
The Centre's curriculum statement endorses this partnership with parents, acknowledging the primacy of their knowledge of their own children.
Combining this with the staff expertise helps to ensure that relevant opportunities for development are provided for each child.
The children's interests reflect their widening experiences of the world as well as categories of schemas. Interaction with their peer group is a crucial aspect of the provision, since young children learn as much from communication with others as from their exploration of the world around them.
Observations
The priority given to observation helps adults tune in to the children's level of development, so that planning is matched to a child's emotional, physical and intellectual needs. The format for written observations supports this, as there is a column headed 'What next?' alongside the space where staff note their observations.
Daily evaluations
Informal daily evaluations of the children's experience enable staff to be flexible in amending their short-term plans. These are set in the context of medium- and long-term plans, which are designed to cover all aspects of the curriculum, linked to the guidance in Birth to Three Matters. Space for review is included in the weekly planning sheet, which allows for comment according to the categories used in Birth to Three Matters.
Individual review
An individual review is completed regularly for each baby and toddler. This shows progress across the Birth to Three Matters categories, and informs the regular meetings with parents.
Parent involvement
Parent involvement is seen to be essential, and encouraged from the start through introductory sessions and structured interviews soon after children start to attend the Centre. Thereafter, time is set aside each term for keyworkers to talk through children's progress with parents, in addition to the informal daily contacts.
At present there are Spanish, Urdu and Sylheti-speaking staff who can help with interpreting. Parents speaking other languages may bring a friend as interpreter, or ask for help from the local authority's translation service.
Individual Education Plans for children with special educational needs are more detailed, but are drawn up and monitored in the same way. In principle, the system is comparable, but there are more frequent meetings and a wider range of colleagues, including specialists from other services, are involved.
Parents' views are recorded on the review sheet following meetings, as are the learning priorities which have been agreed for the next few months.
Ms Marshall comments that senior managers find they can gain an insight into the understanding their less experienced colleagues have of the children through the regular monitoring of records. The agreed approach to observation and record keeping forms a significant part of the induction of new staff, and is a significant part of continuing professional development.
There is also a Centre-wide system for tracking representative samples of children on a regular basis. The resulting evidence stimulates reflection, and the development of a consistently responsive way of working.
References
* Ann Langston, 'All about...working with under-threes' (Nursery World, 7 August 2003)
* Julia Manning-Morton and Maggie Thorp (2001), Key Times - A Framework for Developing High Quality Provision for Children Under Three Years Old, Camden Under-Threes Development Group and the University of North London
* Sure Start Unit 2002, Birth to Three Matters: a framework to support children in their earliest years, DfES Publications Centre
* DfES 2003, Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years, available with comments from www.gtce.org.uk/research/earlyyearscasestud.asp