Planning and Using Time in the Foundation Stage

Jill Williams, Karen McInnes

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134023332
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Operating on two levels, this book aims to help students and practitioners understand how to plan and use time effectively within the foundation stage setting. The book examines how children learn and play at different times of day, how they fiction when they might be tired or hungry and how best to organize the learning day with this in mind. The authors discuss the issue of environment, how children relate to different areas within their own room, and what happens when routines of time and place are altered.

The book also discusses how to develop children's understanding of time and how to incorporate the theme of time into children's play. The book includes:

• practical activities and examples that will allow children to fully comprehend the concept of time
• advice on how to create time for children to learn through play, inquiry and investigation
• sections on how time can be used to include parents, colleagues and the local community.

This book provides in-depth analysis of how effective use of time can be beneficial for parents, children and staff in early years setting.

CHAPTER 1

How do we recognise and value time with children?

Aside from sleeping, and perhaps playing, there is no other activity that occupies as much of the child’s time as that involved in attending school. Apart from the bedroom (where he has his eyes closed most of the time) there is no single enclosure in which he spends a longer time than in the classroom.

(Jackson 1968, cited in Alexander 2000)

The purpose of our book is to consider how time can be used effectively in whatever situation or setting the child may find himself. The current pattern of early education in England with its variety of provision has seemingly inevitable anomalies in the use of time. We explore some of the important influences on the education of young children and consider how these influences affect the quality of the use of time in the Foundation Stage. Children’s experience of time, space and the opportunity to make relationships will help to shape the people that they will become. The organisation of these aspects of the curriculum will depend on how the adults in the setting view children’s development and the importance that they place on provision that supports young children’s learning. It will further depend on the trust that adults place in young children and the confidence that adults have in standing by the principles set out in the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage (QCA 2000: 11).

Children spend long periods of their day in a variety of settings. According to a survey in 2004 (BBC 13 July 2004), they may have experienced four different cultures before reaching Key Stage 1 (e.g. home, playgroup, nursery, reception class). It was reported that there were inconsistencies between the various settings in the use of time, space and opportunities for active learning. Children, particularly in reception classes, spent too long sitting still on the ‘carpet’, had little time to play and were denied free access to outdoor play. Creative and expressive communication was also not developed (Ofsted 2004a). This paints a dismal picture of the implementation of the curriculum guidance but fortuitously provides straightforward evidence to support the explorations in the following chapters.

Inconsistencies in the nature of provision for young children are the result of a combination of factors. Among these will be the different training programmes that practitioners have undertaken. They may have been presented with differing views of the needs of young children and of how learning can be supported effectively. This will result in different ideas on pedagogy or the way in which they teach and similarly different views on the way that children learn. Examples to illustrate this include teachers who are trained to teach Key Stage 2 and then teach in a reception class with no further training, teachers who have been trained to teach in the Foundation Stage but have had no child development included in their training, and teachers who have had curricular elements omitted from their training, such as history or dance, and do not have sufficient understanding of the need for breadth and depth in the curriculum.

Children and time in the Foundation Stage

In September 2000 the Foundation Stage, in England, was introduced. This was to be a continuous stage of educational experience for all children from the age of three to the end of the reception year. The Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage (QCA 2000) provides a framework within which practitioners can work and sets out the early learning goals for young children. The goals are reached by a series of stepping stones and it is the responsibility of the practitioner to provide appropriate experiences to ensure that children are able to achieve them. In the framework there is emphasis on children being active, organising their own learning experiences, using talk and interacting with others. It is seen as important that the curriculum should be planned with opportunities for play to support exploration, control, risk taking and problem solving. These are positive aims and have important implications for young children as learners. It leaves us with the message that in order to deliver a curriculum that will satisfy the needs of growing minds, ‘practitioners must understand the stages of learning through which young children pass’ and ‘the characteristics of young children as learners’ (Drake 2001: vi). The more we understand about young children, the more we will appreciate the way that time can be used most effectively with them. We are very fortunate that the Foundation Stage has a set of guidelines underpinned by sound principles.

All children from three years to the end of the reception year are in the Foundation Stage. This may seem like repetition but it is an important statement. What age, then, do children start school? What are the reasons for the timing? What difference will it make to individuals? Many practitioners working with young children ask these questions privately but have to accept the situation and plan for it accordingly. If they feel that there is an erosion of children’s rights through the timing being wrong and the situation inappropriate, they feel ill equipped to argue. This should never be the case and as practitioners working with young children we should always question, reflect and argue for what we believe is right for children’s well-being.

Time to start school

The statutory age at which children start school is the term after a child’s fifth birthday (Woodhead 1989). This is earlier than in other countries with six or seven years of age being the norm in Europe and the rest of the world (Sharp 2002). However, is this the reality for all children? In fact, the school starting age is earlier still with four years of age being the norm due to the practice of admitting children into the reception class at the beginning of the year in which they become five. There are a number of reasons for this. In the 1970s and early 1980s falling primary school rolls meant that there was spare classroom space which needed to be filled with young children to keep up the school numbers and to maintain teachers’ jobs. Then the introduction of the nursery voucher scheme (SCAA 1996) accelerated this trend further as head teachers realised that four-year-olds would bring much needed voucher funding with them (Pugh 1996).

Another change in admission policy was due to the concern over the perceived disadvantage to summer-born children. These children had traditionally received less infant schooling than other children in the same year group. Therefore, to counter this, it was deemed more beneficial for them to start in the autumn term of the academic year in which they became five and have three terms’ schooling (Ofsted 1993) despite there being a scanty evidence base for this decision. Currently there is the additional pressure on children having to achieve the early learning goals by the end of the reception year. As a consequence those local authorities that had maintained a two- or three-term entry are moving to a one-term entry to allow children more chance to achieve the learning goals (Ofsted 2004a).

All of these changes result in a nominal school starting age of four years old and at present 61 per cent of all four-year-olds, including summer-born children, are in infant classes in primary schools (DfES 2004). This is in spite of concerns voiced by practitioners and parents (McInnes 2001).

It can be argued, however, that the age at which our children start school is, in reality, earlier still – three years of age. The Sure Start unit, established to implement the national early years agenda and coordinate early years services (DfES/DWP 2002), states that there is now a free part-time education place for all three- and four-year-olds whose parents want it (Sure Start 2004). At present there are 93 per cent of three-year-olds taking up free part-time early years places (DfES 2004). Also as the Foundation Stage begins at age three, children from three years of age may be in educational and care settings such as playgroups, childminders, nursery classes, and early excellence centres. They will be receiving educational experiences framed around a statutory curriculum despite what practitioners and parents may want for their children. So having ascertained when children start school and why they start school at such a young age, we must ask, do we use children’s time to their best advantage and is this acceptable and appropriate?

Many would argue that experiences for children are appropriate in terms of the environment, activities and adult interactions. This, however, is a position that can be argued and debated from a variety of moral, philosophical and educational stances. In this book we reflect on some of these influences within the context of how time is valued and used with young children.

Influences on our use of time

There are a variety of theoretical and practical influences that determine how we use time with young children. These will be determined further by:

• the type of setting;

• the pedagogy or teaching style;

• theories of learning.

The type of setting

During the course of a day children in the Foundation Stage may spend their time in one or many settings (QCA 2000). These include:

• a playgroup;

• a childminder’s home;

• a nursery class;

• a nursery school or combined centre;

• a reception class.

These different settings have potentially different working practices and philosophies that impact on how their practitioners use time with children. This is the focus for the section that follows. For a more comprehensive overview of provision for the care and education of young children, see Devereux and Miller (2003).

A playgroup

Practitioners working in a playgroup may have constraints upon their time such as having to set up and put away all equipment at the beginning and end of sessions and this will limit the amount of time they have to spend with young children and influence what they put out and how it is organised. This, in turn, will impact on the time children have to use equipment and how they use it. There may not be an outdoor area so children will not have time to work outside. The adults working with the children will have different levels of training, experience and views of how to work with children and this will inevitably affect how time is used with children in the setting.

A childminder’s home

Childminders work with young children in their own homes and as a consequence there can be, and usually is, greater fluidity in how time is used with children. Time is less compartmentalised and often time is taken to follow children’s interests. Routines of the day such as snack time and lunchtime are often taken when the children are ready and children can often take a nap when they feel they need one. Children are also more often taken on outings such as the local park, shopping or local places of interest where they can spend a good length of time on one activity or activities that are linked.

A nursery class

Time in a nursery class is often more compartmentalised than in the previous settings. Timetables, which are part of a whole school ethos, are often used and strictly followed. There are usually the demands of the rest of the school to take into account such as organisation of play-times and use of the school hall which impact on the daily routine offered to the children. There are also the views of other colleagues to contend with, as well as demands from the head teacher, which may differ or even conflict with how time might be best used with children. A common issue often causing conflict is the time children spend engaged in playful learning.

A nursery school or combined centre

A nursery school or combined centre is usually a setting where all practitioners are trained to work with young children and are focused on their needs. The day is usually organised according to timetables but there is usually opportunity for time to be used in different ways. Practitioners in these settings tend to escape the downward pressures faced by their colleagues in nursery classes but still have to contend with the demands of the local education authority and Ofsted. However, as more centres offer extended hours with wrap around care,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Poem: ‘Leisure’ by William Henry Davies
• Introduction
• 1 How do we recognise and value time with children?
• 2 Time to learn
• 3 Time to assess
• 4 Time to develop a home–school partnership
• 5 Time to work as a team
• 6 Time to self-evaluate
• 7 Conclusion
• References
• Index