Teach-Early-Years-14.1

THREE STEPS TO SUCCESS Feel confident to adjust the pace for the children in your class and use the scheme of work as a guideline rather than a step-by-step instruction manual. Work with your staff team to update and share knowledge of quality adult- child interactions in provision. Ask if children’s learning is engaging and links to children’s interests. How well does your classroom follow early years pedagogy? numbers to 5. Or try this tower- building game: invite groups of children to roll a die that returns a “1” or “0”; with each “1” they can add a block to their tower, and the team who builds their tower to 5 blocks first wins. If you feel the class has not grasped a concept by the end of the week, try not to feel the pressure to rush on to the next topic; instead, think with your team about how you could approach things differently. CONTINUOUS PROVISION We know that mathematical learning won’t just be happening in a “maths area”; it will be embedded across all provision areas inside and outside. Here are two steps to unlocking children’s enthusiasm for maths throughout your learning environment. 1. Identifying key opportunities Let’s take the following areas of learning and look at where opportunities may arise for meaningful activities: Number: This may be as simple as adding numbers to the parking spaces in a small world garage or including measuring tapes on rulers for children to measure their creations in the construction area. Also, think about including calendars, clocks, cash registers and paper for receipts in the role play area. Look for opportunities in the snack area to discuss sharing equally or counting out fruits. Try and find the links to number within everyday jobs in the classroom. Numerical pattern: Provide activities where children can subitise and spot patterns in number, for example, setting up a play train carriage or bus with passengers. This will also help children to understand concepts of one more/less when passengers get off and on the vehicle. Also, think about adding objects in formation, such as cake trays in the playdough area or egg containers in the home corner. These will help children to subitise numbers into different orientations. Shape: Watch for children using equipment to make their own version of shapes or patterns; loose parts give children the freedom to explore on their own terms. There are opportunities for children to explore THE CASE FOR CREATIVITY Play and exploration are inherently motivating. Young children’s learning begins with real-life situations: sharing out snacks, working out the number of friends allowed in the playhouse, or estimating how high you can build a tower before it falls. These activities all have direct impacts on children’s lives and offer an immediate result. In stark contrast, sitting in front of a screen or reciting number facts out of context often has little impact on children’s understanding. With more creativity, we can boost children’s engagement and foster a lifelong love of maths. So, let’s look at how we can go from meaningless to meaningful learning with direct teaching and continuous provision. the properties of 3D shapes and their 2D-shaped sides in the construction area by using shadow backing to store these blocks on shelves. 2. Using sustained shared thinking Now we have established some clear strategies to make maths more engaging, we can consider the role of the practitioner’s interactions. We want children to have ownership over their learning and follow their interests, so a good strategy is to use sustained shared thinking, which supports encouraging , modelling and extending children’s thinking . Practitioners encourage children’s ideas and take time to understand their point of view. Next, practitioners will model thought processes out loud to give children a structure that they can use themselves. Finally, both participants extend their thinking together. You may want to use questions such as What about…? , Could we try…? , I wonder what would happen if we…? , Would using… help? . When sustained shared thinking is embedded in practice, children will feel safe and empowered to suggest and explain their own thinking and take more risks with their learning. Reciting number facts out of context often has little impact on children’s understanding DIRECT TEACHING When teaching in a group, think carefully about the objective you want to achieve. For example, let’s take a Reception class with the learning objective to find one more than another number, working with numbers up to 5 . Think about adding elements of music, story, competition and interaction. Try involving children’s favourite toys in the classroom. Put these into a drawstring bag, then ask children to count how many and add one by one; ask them to say how many there are in the bag now. To make sure all children are actively learning, try giving them five frames to represent the objects in the bag, or children can count on their fingers. You may also want to use stories such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and encourage children to build Lego towers as the caterpillar eats each piece of food. Linking a nursery rhyme to your objective can also be effective – for example, “One man went to mow” would work well with this lesson for Teachearlyyears.com 47