Continuous Provision - Personal and Thinking Skills

By Claire Hewson

As a dedicated practitioner, you want the very best for your children. You want them to grow up healthy, happy, self-reliant and confident in their abilities. That is why it is vital that personal and thinking skills underpin every aspect of the early years foundation stage.
Personal skills enable children to manage stress, to bounce back after difficulties, to understand that mistakes are important for learning, and to communicate and cooperate with others. Thinking skills are about making decisions, solving problems systematically and thinking critically.
Continuous Provision: Personal and Thinking Skills gives practical guidance on how to further children's personal and thinking skills as you play with them, so that they continue to develop their abilities when you are not present. It includes:
* Focused sections with a clear breakdown of personal and thinking skills, so that you have the knowledge and confidence to promote children's development.
* Open-ended questions to further each specific skill, as well as practical challenges to enrich children’s learning experiences.
* Activity ideas and photocopiable resources to help you plan for continuous provision.
Ideal for practitioners who work with children aged from 30 months onwards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Allen Group
• Release date: Oct 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912611492

Book preview

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all the staff, children and parents at Needingworth Community Pre-School, Cambridgeshire. Pam Pantazi and the staff and children at Little Hands Nursery, Bourn, Cambridgeshire. With particular thanks to Dawn Gibson, Randall Bowman, Lucas Goldsmith, Anthony Hardisty and Jamie Hewson.

Published by Practical Pre-School Books, A Division of MA Education Ltd, St Jude’s Church, Dulwich Road, Herne Hill, London, SE24 0PB. Tel: [phone] www.practicalpreschoolbooks.com

© MA Education Ltd 2019. All photos © MA Education Ltd.

Design: Mary Holmes fonthillcreative 01722 717036

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

2021 digital version converted and published by Andrews UK Limited www.andrewsuk.com

Introduction

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Strong personal and thinking skills determine children’s ability to thrive now and in future.

Personal and thinking skills are the foundation for successful participation in daily life, and should therefore underpin every aspect of the Early Years Foundation Stage. By keeping these skills at the forefront of your mind as children engage in continuous provision, you help them to develop the adaptive, positive behaviour that will enable them to meet challenges now and in their future lives.

It is crucial to remember that skills development is not more important than acquiring knowledge - it is equally important. In his article, Let’s explode a few myths about teaching methods, Dan Williams, lecturer in Initial Teacher Education at the University of Derby, says:

‘The key to acquiring them (skills) lies in the acquisition of subject knowledge. The greater the subject knowledge, the greater the ability to problem solve, to critically analyse, to create. Take the mechanic who knows the engine of a car inside out and compare him or her with the mechanic with little knowledge of the engine. (Times Educational Supplement, April 2016)

Let’s clarify the difference between skills and knowledge:

Knowledge is information we acquire through our senses: watching, reading, touching, listening, tasting and smelling. Knowledge is our familiarity with facts and theoretical concepts and can be self-acquired or learnt from another person. Skills is our ability to apply that knowledge to various situations. We develop skills by practising them and through trial and error. For instance, social skills are acquired through interactions with different people in different social situations.

Skills and knowledge are vital ingredients of the same cake. For example, if a child is helping to turn the role play area into an aquarium and you want them to develop the creative and critical thinking skill ‘making connections between ideas’ then they will need to draw upon knowledge of aquariums that they have gained through personal experience, books, films, from talking to others, or a combination of all those experiences.

Although this book provides a logical breakdown of personal and thinking skills each one does not exist in isolation and there is overlap between them.

Many personal and thinking skills will already be part of your everyday practice. This book is specifically designed to help practitioners bring these skills into the spotlight so that they are consciously and effectively promoting them. You will find solid examples of how to place skills at the heart of your continuous provision, as you simultaneously help children to build their subject knowledge.

What is skills-based learning?

Personal skills are divided into:

Resilience and Perseverance

Self-Management.

As an overview, developing personal skills means creating opportunities for children to:

Develop confidence to experiment with ideas.

Persist when challenges occur.

Learn from mistakes.

Focus on an activity for a period of time.

Become responsible for their own learning.

Listen, share and cooperate within agreed rules.

Adapt their behaviour to different social situations.

Thinking skills are divided into:

Managing and Planning Tasks

Information Processing

Enquiry and Reasoning

Creative and Critical Thinking.

In summary, these are the tools that help children to:

Use their knowledge to make decisions regarding what they want to do and how they will do it.

Solve problems both independently and with others through sustained shared thinking.

Analyse patterns and relationships.

Make connections in their learning.

Develop effective long-term and short-term memory.

Monitor and evaluate their own progress.

We will explore each personal and thinking skill category in more depth over the next sections.

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After demonstration from an adult the child independently practised his throwing and aiming skills.

What is continuous provision?

Continuous provision is a provision for learning that enables children to initiate play and make their own choices without the presence of an adult. This does not mean that adults shouldn’t interact with children, it simply means that when an adult isn’t playing, children are still learning. Resources for continuous provision are not packed away after an hour, but are left out for as long as children need to make explorations, develop ideas and consolidate their learning.

For continuous provision to be effective, you need to ensure that:

Each area of continuous provision has the right level of challenge and support for all children. Provision is planned based on careful observations of children in action. If there isn’t enough scope for challenge children will simply practise the same low-level skills over and over again. Whilst this builds their confidence, it simply does not take their learning forward. The Statutory Framework (1.6) states: ‘Practitioners must consider the individual needs, interests, and stage of development of each child in their care, and must use this information to plan a challenging and enjoyable experience for each child in all of the areas of learning and development.’

Resources are open-ended. It is beneficial to give children cues as to how you would like them to interact with resources. For instance, if you want them to order balls of playdough from smallest to biggest you might provide a photographic prompt. At the same time, be flexible and open to other possibilities. There are many ways children may choose to interact with resources and these ways may have value too. Children need the freedom to interpret the environment themselves in order to apply their creativity and to explore. By being able to interpret the resources in a way that is relevant to their unique needs and experiences, they become curious, interested learners.

Your plans are shared with other adults playing with the children. This way they can help children to build the key skill you have identified, extending and adapting your original idea as necessary.

Resources are safe, appealing and plentiful. Ditch anything old, incomplete or broken. Parents and local businesses can be asked to donate resources to keep costs down. Familiar resources can be made exciting by changing their context. For example, one day your wooden building blocks might be set out with The Three Little Pigs’ story sack to encourage children to re-tell the story. Another day you might want to link the blocks with a ‘castles’ theme by arranging photographs of castles around the blocks so that children construct their own castles.

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Learning new skills with adult support.

How can adults promote personal and thinking skills within continuous provision?

The adult’s role is crucial in supporting children’s ability to challenge themselves as they interact with resources. Before they play, it’s important that children understand clear rules, boundaries and behaviour expectations so that they confidently carry out their explorations.

If children don’t know their boundaries they will not feel comfortable enough to explore, and will engage in familiar, low-level, ‘safe’ play that doesn’t challenge them. Spend quality time with children teaching them the rules and procedures for accessing equipment.

When you first set out resources, have fun exploring them with children so they can see you applying your own knowledge, personal and thinking skills. Just as in the animal kingdom, children learn by observing and interacting with adults as well as with each other. The work of Soviet psychologist Vygotsky emphasises the social nature of development. He talks about how learning is a result of interaction with others and that we can achieve higher levels of processing when there are others to help and stretch us.

As you play with children, engage in sustained shared thinking by bouncing ideas together, modelling language, praising children’s suggestions, making suggestions of your own and asking children’s opinions of those suggestions. Ask open-ended questions that stimulate personal and thinking skills, such as:

What will happen if you...?

Have you thought about...?

What is the problem?

What happens when you...?

Why do you think this will happen?

How can you fix this?

What do you notice about this?

When you are immersed in children’s play you can respond to their needs on the spot by offering additional resources that build upon their interests and enable them to extend their skills. By playing with children you will understand how to maximise learning opportunities and increase engagement, providing the scaffold they need to engage in meaningful self-initiated play with those same resources later on. Give children the time to revisit resources many times independently so that they can consolidate and extend their own thinking, generating new ideas.

Remember that continuous provision is most effective when children have opportunities to play with adults as well as by themselves and with their peers. The Statutory Framework (1.8) states:

‘Each area of learning and development must be implemented through planned, purposeful play and through a mix of adult-led and child-initiated activity. Play is essential for children’s development, building their confidence as they learn to explore, to think about problems, and relate to others. Children learn by leading their