The Project Approach in Early Years Provision by Marianne Sargent

Author:Marianne Sargent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: project, children, practitioners, managers, curriculum, social, skills, literacy, numeracy, project work, shared, education, early years, EYFS
ISBN: 9781907241741
Publisher: Andrews UK Ltd.
Published: 2014-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

Learning how to recall and reflect upon events

Evaluation skills

Evaluation skills enable children to reflect, recall and evaluate information in order to formulate opinions.

The children in Developing evaluation skills: an example are recalling events from the past two weeks and reflecting upon them with their puppet George. This is the beginning stage in their progress towards developing evaluation skills. Although seemingly insignificant, these conversations with George are the laying foundations for later educational challenges that involve the further step of evaluating information. Learning stories and displays are particularly useful for helping children to evaluate information and an example of this is provided in the second part of this book.

Fostering creative and imaginative thought

The introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 and the subsequent implementation of the Primary Strategies in the late nineties resulted in an increased academic emphasis in primary schools (Broadhead, 2004; Anning, 2005). This impacted upon foundation stage provision and had a detrimental effect upon the creative approaches to teaching and learning (Bayley and Broadbent, 2002). There is a growing movement in support of bringing creativity back into early education (Open EYE, 2010; Tims, 2010) and the child-centred ideology represented in current British early years curricular places renewed emphasis on the provision of a creative curriculum that starts with the child.

Dowling includes “fantasizing” and “imagining” in her list of thinking skills (2005, p.10). In order to fully participate and enjoy the where is George? provocation the children were required to suspend their disbelief and think imaginatively. According to Rattigan (2008) young children need such opportunities in order to develop their lateral thinking skills and personal creativity. Clarke further explains that creative thinking “enables the learner to look for alternatives, not always accepting the first answer” (2007, p.12). In order to help children achieve this higher level of cognition it is important to provide an environment where imaginative thought is welcomed and children are confident to express their own opinions (Charlesworth, 2005). They should be exposed to open-ended experiences and encouraged to offer ideas without fear of failure. The provocation format is an ideal medium through which to encourage creative thought.

Asking the right questions

Wood places emphasis upon the use of effective questioning in promoting thinking skills. He explains that questions should be structured so as to encourage children to develop their thinking and “to reason, to hypothesize and to generate their own theories” (1998, cited in Moyles et al, 2002). Thornton and Brunton (2004) point out that promoting such skills is not easy and explain the difficulties practitioners face in “judging the appropriate intervention”. They suggest that practitioners “need to maintain sensitivity to individual children’s needs for support, while knowing how to intervene in a way that does not inhibit their thoughts and actions”. This involves the practitioner carefully listening and observing in order to seek out opportunities to build upon the children’s interests and challenge them to indulge in a deeper thought process. Projects provide an ideal arena in which to do this. Children are engaged in investigations that perpetuate their interests and absorb them in ongoing open-ended activities.

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