The Trouble with Play by Susan Grieshaber and Felicity McArdle. Open University Press (2010)
My online course on Sustained Shared Thinking is available here now…
>> The Sustained Shared Thinking Online Course <<
>> The Sustained Shared Thinking Online Course <<
Sustained shared thinking has been defined as
” an episode in which two or more individuals ‘work together’ in an intellectual way to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate activities, extend a narrative etc. Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend” Siraj-Blatchford et al (2002) Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years (REPEY), Dfes.
This is not a new concept, just a new name. Most early years theorist value the adult/child interaction, from Vygotsky’s social interaction and more knowledgeable other; Bruner’s discovery learning; Piaget constructivism right through to Lave’s situated learning. Continue Reading
*** Unfortunately the Teachernet website is no longer available. You can find some of the resources in the Government’s Web Archive here ***
Did you know you can get a lot of the Government’s publications free, online, from Teachernet?
These can either be downloaded or posted out to you (no postage either!) with the only caveat being that quantity is restricted. Why would you want more than one copy of Letters and Sounds or the EYFS? Certainly, as a trainer, I find that after a few sessions the EYFS cards become battered and covered with my notes and circled areas when clarifying points.
By having several copies at nursery or in your setting, staff can browse, cut out, display and discuss the publications. They could even take a copy home to read at their leisure. The EYFS is such a broad document that it deserves being studied area by area and by having spare copies practitioners can do this
The other interesting thing on the excellent teacher net site is that you can view and download thousands of documents, again all for free. These vary from newspaper articles to white papers to Sure Start magazines. I have spent many hours just viewing items which looked interesting, but which I would never have known about otherwise, and have subsequently ordered documents.
One example of this is the invaluable ‘information sharing:Practitioners’ guide’ published by the Department for children, schools and families. I have often had practitioners say to me that “we can’t say anything without consent”. Under normal circumstances this would be broadly true, but this booklet explains very clearly when you can, when you can’t and when you should share information. The other area it covers is what constitutes consent and who can give consent, which is an especially sensitive area where is child is going through the adoption process or is being taken care of by grandparents, for example. I feel this would be an enormous help to practitioners and particularly setting managers who want to make sure they make the correct decision on information sharing.
