Thursday, 22 November 2012

Expectations



I got myself into a right tiz recently. So much so that I found myself almost buying a EYFS activities book! Yes shocking I know.

It all started with the revised EYFS. You know the promises of reduced paperwork? boy I was looking forward to the reduced paperwork.
Well they lied.
It took a while for it to register because in readiness for the revised EYFS I had written a 'list of things to do' and was up to my eyes in revising policies and changing observation forms, writing articles for the newsletter to tell parents about the change, devising a 2 yr record check form...etc etc.

Once I had done everything on my list up to a certain point I realised that I was in fact adding things to my list and it was running away with me. And when I looked at the way I was implementing the revised EYFS on a day to day basis my list started to grow again- why? because I realised that the focus of the EYFS has changed. There has been a fundamental shift to teaching and school readiness and an expectation that I will do Planning (with a capital P) and 6 to 8 week assessments and next steps etc etc.

 

I have been registered for over 20 years. I 'minded' children in the beginning. You know the old one about children learning at their mothers knees (or apron hem) by counting and sorting socks into pairs. That was the line spun to me when I started childminding, it was ok to do a certain amount of housework because I was only 'minding' the children and they could help me by counting the socks I was pegging out on the line. (What is it with socks?).

So the first few years of 'minding' were spent being a mum with an extra child or two around. Slowly the idea of providing educational activities as part of childminding crept in (no doubt someone will disagree and say I was always expected to educate, but that's not how I remember it). No one said I had to do any further training. In fact I had been minding some years before it was even compulsory to have a first aid certificate (although I got together with other childminders to provide first aid training years before that because it seemed the sensible thing to have).
Slowly training did become available, the first was child protection. Then, as it filtered down from more progressive areas of the country a Level 3 Certificate in Childminding Practice came along, and I was one of a group of childminders in my area to be the first to sign up to take this recognised qualification. I loved going to college and one tutor in particular had a profound effect on me and my attitude to childhood.
 
It wasn't long before I was Planning. I have very fond memories of those themed based activities. The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The 12 Days of Christmas. Gradually though I stopped 'doing' themes and started truly following children's interests. In recent years I have relaxed into PLOD's. The children are doing well, ok sometimes I seem to lose the plot and we drift but on the whole learning takes place anyway without me even thinking about it- because the children are doing it naturally (autonomous learners).

 

Cue the revised EYFS and me reading the Statutory Framework and losing all confidence in what I am doing!

My one sheet of retrospective planning and simple observation form that did me so well for at least the past 5 years started to flow into individual planning sheets, group planning sheets, parents planning sheets, 3 different types of observation sheets, tracking, assessments, medium term planning sheets etc etc and I began to worry that I didn't know what I was doing anymore! so I started hunting round for a system that would help and I had the crazy idea that what I needed was a book of EYFS activities all neatly categorised and full of learning intentions. Until I clicked on an example page, and it took me to a page of wavy lines for children to trace.....and Bang it dawned on me that this was the very thing I had decided years ago that I was Not going to do. I do not do colouring in sheets, worksheets and tracing, unless a child asks to do one....and they rarely have because they are too busy learning through play.  

So the panic over. Sense, common or otherwise, has been restored. I will continue to follow the children's interests and I will stand back to give them space to go where they want to, and we will drift occasionally. I am not a 'get children ready for school' farm. I am getting children ready for life, to be confident, kind, honest, fair and respectful individuals. 

 

 

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