On Wednesday I had the enormous pleasure of visiting a fascinating company nestled in the skirts of Liverpool’s Catholic cathedral.
I had met Mark in London before Christmas and he had been telling me about his office, which has a circus theme. Intrigued, I asked more “Well, we have a big top, a giraffe and hold our meetings in front of the ball pit…would you like to come and have a look?” Would I?!
‘There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.’
William Wordsworth
Wordsworth’s wonderful perception of a child’s mind, captured in his ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood’ – published in 1793 – correlates remarkably well with the findings of recent studies.
Though he and his sister Dorothy were, for a time, responsible for the care of a toddler, the poet’s observation and depiction of newborn experience is still exceptional for the period.
I am delighted to introduce Sharon, who is an energetic and dedicated advocate for children’s physical activity in all forms. She is great fun to be with, as you might guess from the title of her article here.
She has some great advice on involving children AND their families, as well as some tried and tested techniques. So do enjoy the article, and then get moving!
Frances has been running sessions for preschool, nursery, toddler groups and primaries since 2006, and now brings this wealth of experience to adults through education consultancy.
Her fairly unique skillset includes a BSc in Psychology and specialist music training in the Kodály, Dalcroze and Orff approaches to music education. As these approaches involve singing, movement and instrument play, sessions are very practical and hands-on.
Whenever I visit settings to do training, or ask practitioners what would make their job role more satisfying, the usual response is “less paperwork”. I have been discussing this with Catherine Lyon, an experienced nursery owner, who has developed her own solution for this problem.
In this guest blog, Catherine explains the rationale for her software as well as its benefits.
This is a very special guest blog by Kathryn Albany-Ward.
Normal Vision
Deuteranopia
This time of year is tinged with a bit of sadness for me, ever since we found out our son is severely colour blind. Until he was 7 we were in blissful ignorance that the colours of Christmas hold no meaning for him.
If you have read my previous post on Sir Michael Marmot, you will know that I’m a big fan of Sir Michael’s research, especially Fair Society, Healthy Lives. I’m also always interested in any plans and proposals that affect children in this country.
So, I was especially excited to see that Public Health England (PHE) has just produced a report that details their 7 priorities for the next 5 years. These are:
Simona McKenzie has posed another interesting question for me: “What should good documentation contain as a summary of children’s learning, that is focussed and shows exactly what the learning journey a child has taken?”
My first thought was that there are certain statutory, legal requirements that all childcare professionals need to fulfil. Namely:
The Department for Education’s Statutory Framework (DfE, 2014: 13) calls for on-going (or formative) assessments based on day-to-day observations of the children, without ‘excessive paperwork’ that is ‘limited to that which is absolutely necessary’. This is incredibly vague and open to interpretation, both by practitioners and Ofsted.
One of the great joys of holiday time is catching up on the shows that you just don’t seem to have time to listen to or watch during the working week.
Thus it was that I managed to finally listen to the series on BBC Radio 4 called The Educators. In it, Sarah Montague interviews ‘the people whose ideas are challenging the future of education’, and where better to start than with Sir Ken Robinson. I’ve written before about Sir Ken’s video made at the TED lectures and how his humour and observations help make the point.
I had the great pleasure of returning to Birmingham recently. This was to so do some training with a group of enthusiastic and knowledgeable practitioners on Observations for Assessments.
One of the techniques that I had chosen to focus on was Learning Stories. Margaret Carr was promoting Learning Stories as a method for assessment over 10 years ago, so it’s not a new idea. However, it is an opportune time to return to them as the discussion about how to assess children looks to return (BBC Website).
