Onwards and Upwards

Supporting the transition to Key Stage One

Kathleen Orlandi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136623431
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How can teachers ensure that the transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage to Key Stage One is a positive experience for children? What are the issues for children, parents and teachers and how should teachers respond to these? This book introduces the concept of transition and identifies the key problem areas for children and adults fo

Chapter

1

Introduction

Chapter Content

This chapter defines the overall aims of the book and briefly introduces the nature of the research that informs it.

It takes a broad look at the aspects of transition for children moving from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage One. These include transition as an everyday experience for children, multi-dimensional influences on transition, what research says about transition to Key Stage One, and transition and the curriculum. These will be examined in greater depth in the following chapters.

The Overall Aims of the Book

This book takes account of some of the issues and perceived barriers to successful transition from Foundation Stage to Year One in England, for children and adults. However, greater attention is given to the opportunities presented by this period of transition between two phases of education. This includes opportunities for critical reflection, challenging current practice, deeper pedagogical understanding and improved practice.

This book aims to bridge the gap between academic study, research and practice. It is hoped that it will inspire practitioners to engage in action research and collaborative research.

The Nature of the Research that Informs Much of the Book

In addition to published research about transition or aspects of practice affected by transition, the examples used within the chapters are from the author’s research. The examples are taken from small case studies in which several children were studied before, during and after transition from Reception Class to Year One. The reader should be aware that the children in the case study examples are all boys. However, there is no intention to address gender difference within this book. The case studies are real examples but the names of settings and children have been changed.

What about Transition?

Transition as an Everyday Experience for Children

Children go through various phases of transition in the first years of their lives. Many young children make transitions between carers and environments several times each day or across a week. For example, a child may be woken from his sleep by a parent and collected by a grandparent who then takes him to nursery or school. In school he will probably have a set of adults including a teacher who will care for him, except at lunchtime when a different team takes over. At the end of the day, the child will be collected by a relative or childminder and taken home, as the parents may be at work. This scenario may not be a real example, but is very typical of the experience of many children who have been in my care. For some children the changes across the day are even more confusing because of the use of breakfast and afternoon clubs. Some young children may attend two different Foundation Stage settings, for instance attending a playgroup in the morning and a maintained nursery in the afternoon. Transition from Foundation Stage to Key Stage One is just one more experience of change for children. With the introduction of the Foundation Stage there has been concern about the perceived gap between its curriculum and that of Key Stage One, and the consequent difficulties in transition between the two. This book focuses on this particular period of transition.

Multi-Dimensional Influences on Transition

Dockett et al. (1999) studied the views of parents and educators about what is important about children’s transition to school. They found that the majority of parents and educators wanted children to be happy, feel positive, and settle into school routines easily. However, they discovered that the experiences that were part of the transition were ‘multi-dimensional’, and that different children experience the same process in different ways as they make adjustments to different people, routines and contexts. They suggest that the geographic context is a crucial factor that affects the transition experience, but that the ways people respond to the issues of transition varied within geographical locations. Factors affecting this might include the length of time and mode of travel to the setting, or the distance between the locations of the pre-school and Key Stage One building, or even the nature of the layout and organisation. Other factors might include the variety of pre-school settings the children have attended before entering the school setting so that the children and families are not familiar with each other. They concluded that successful transition programmes would look quite different, as they would be responding to the local community needs.

The path children take across the Foundation Stage, and beyond it, varies. They often have a combination of playgroups and nurseries. However, individual arrangements were made for the remaining children whose needs varied. Some local authorities have guidelines in place, but flexibility must be a necessity. This may include a meeting for parents with the ‘new’ teachers, and visits of the children to their new classrooms to meet their ‘new’ teachers.

What Research Says about Transition to Key Stage One

The transition from Foundation Stage to Key Stage One has been the subject of research commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). One such research report (IFF, 2004) found that specific issues identified by settings were training and sharing of information. There was some dissatisfaction with the training offered by local authorities. Just over half of those interviewed said that they felt the transition had been very effective. Two areas of concern were: involvement of parents was identified as least effective in the process; and the Early Years practitioners were unsure of the outcomes of the transition process, and therefore felt unable to say if it had been effective.

Research commissioned by the DfES on transition was by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), in which the views of children, parents and practitioners were sought (Sanders et al., 2005). This research found that the biggest challenge identified by teachers was the move from a play-based curriculum to a more structured approach. The introduction to the literacy and numeracy lessons was cited as an example of a problem in that it was difficult to get children to sit and listen to the adult. The ability to sit still and listen to the teacher was identified by school staff as a key skill needed by children if they were to make a good start in Year One. Generally it was felt that the children coped well with the transition. For many children this is a positive thing as it is a demarcation of phases, and they celebrate moving ‘up’ to the next phase, and being at ‘big school’. The research found that the younger/less mature children and those with special needs encountered most difficulties. Children’s views revealed that they were unhappy with the loss of opportunities to learn through play, and they valued their experiences in Reception Class. They were worried about the amount of writing expected in Year One, and about having to sit still. The main negative aspect from parents was the lack of information about transition; they would have liked to have met the Year One teacher before the event, and would have liked to have received information about change in practice so they could prepare their child (Sanders et al., 2005.) This lack of involvement with parents had also been identified as a key issue by IFF Research (IFF, 2004). The NFER research also found that there was a strongly expressed desire for training for Key Stage One teachers in how to provide for the transition from the Foundation Stage. The Foundation Stage curriculum guidance (DfEE, 2000) endorsed the practice of learning through play. Perhaps the Key Stage One teachers need reassurance that they too can use play and experiential learning for their classes.

The National Numeracy and Literacy Strategies were found to have been effective in providing guidance for the transition, but in some Year One Classes there was overemphasis on these at the expense of other aspects of the curriculum. The Reception Class teachers were under pressure from their colleagues in Key Stage One, and school management teams, to work towards the end of Key Stage One assessments, in which: ‘The curriculum shift may be shown to have gone too far in terms of the prescription of a single pedagogical formula, in particular for Literacy and Numeracy’ (David, 2003: 9).

Transition and the Curriculum

Personal observation and communication with teachers currently working in the Foundation Stage indicates that this pressure has eased in many settings because:

Early Years practitioners have been given permission, if they needed it, to plan a curriculum on what is known about developing children’s understanding and learning. As a bonus, the whole of the Reception Year is included in the Foundation Stage and these children also now have a curriculum more suited to meeting their needs.

(English, 2001: 197)

There have been issues with the Foundation Stage Profile (DfES, 2003). Although the handbook acknowledges that many judgements about children’s progress can be made through the practitioner’s knowledge of that child, and that occasionally there may be a need for additional planned observations, the latter seems to have been preferred by some practitioners. Personal experience working with colleagues confirms this, as does Ofsted’s report on transition between Foundation Stage and Key Stage One (Ofsted, 2004). Ofsted found that few Year One teachers were using the profiles for planning, suggesting that this may be because of the ‘absence of clear transitional links between the Foundation Stage curriculum and the subjects of the National Curriculum’ (Ofsted, 2004). I suggest that the large number of records kept by some Foundation Stage teachers, as observed by Ofsted (2004) were perhaps off-putting. ‘Schools were not doing enough to make sure that their assessments and recordings were of direct value’ (Ofsted, 2004), and were advised to review the number and type of assessment used, taking into consideration requirements for Year One. Ofsted (2004) also recommend that subject coordinators are involved in planning for continuity between the two key stages. This may help to remove the imbalance mentioned above.

Discuss

What types of transition do young children go through each day and each week?

How many adults take care of them at different times of the day?

Is there continuity in the way the children are cared for?

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. What are the issues for children?
• 3. What are the issues for parents and practitioners?
• 4. Preparation or practice?
• 5. The features of successful transition between Reception Class and Year One
• 6. Why should Foundation Stage practice be introduced to Year One?
• 7. A principled approach to planning in Year One
• 8. Moving to Year One: opportunity for continuity and for change
• 9. Summary and recommendations
• References
• Index