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Early years detectives (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4)

in the child’s My Learning Journey document. I also felt that the notion of the ‘next step’ was rooted in a one- dimensional, incremental view of learning and development. I believed it was important to challenge this practice and nurture a community of learners.

I wanted staff and parents to engage on a more thoughtful and reflective level as part of developing a powerful relationship that could offer real opportunities for the child. As Chris Athey says in her book Extending Thought in Young Children: “Nothing gets under a parent’s skin more quickly and more permanently than the illumination of his or her own child’s behaviour.”

Finding and developing an appropriate ‘Plod’ process seemed to be the next stage.

Working with Plod

 The Possible Lines of Development, or Plod, process has flourished through work at the Pen Green Research Base and the practices of Pen Green Nursery. I saw its introduction to my setting as a way to work with both practitioners (mostly level 2-4 nursery assistants) and parents, to develop their awareness of how focusing on observations of a child could illicit their interests and their schemas (identifiable patterns of behaviour, often linked to learning in young children). This could then provide the basis for real planning, relevant to the child, that could feed into both room practice and activities at home.

I introduced a cycle (see diagram) for the Plod process. A child’s key person takes their recent observations, collated in the My Learning Journey document, into a meeting with a parent every half term. I often also bring video footage that I have collected of the child in the setting as a way of opening up conversations and to highlight more dominant schemas. Parents are encouraged to come with their own observations in whatever form.

Each meeting has three distinct phases, in which the contributors act like detectives. We summarise the observations from home and the setting on a child review sheet. These can be anecdotal or evidenced, for example through photos or written observations.

Phase two is to try and pick out the patterns – things that repeat themselves or are prominent. The purpose is to abstract interests and schemas, plus any other features that need a focus, such as additional needs or issues around wellbeing. Our aim is to find a focus to place at the centre of the Plod sheet.

Part three of the meeting is to let our imaginations run riot, thinking of all the different activities that could really engage this child, given what we have discovered, and recording them on the Plod sheet. It is important to remember the breadth of the curriculum here.

The two proformas for this meeting – the child review sheet and the Plod sheet itself – were developed with staff to reflect their needs and preferences. Mystarting points for the formats were a sheet from the county’s My Learning Journey document for collecting what practitioners and parents observe about the child, and a Plod version from the EYFS CD-Rom.

The final Plod sheet is then copied so that the parent and practitioner both have a copy. Ideas and activities can now be offered to the child, at home or in the nursery.

Within the nursery, the key person brings their children’s Plod sheets to weekly room meetings, where they try to match up activities to devise a sensible plan for the following week. When an activity is added, it is dated on the Plod so that coverage of their child’s needs is monitored.

It is common for an activity to appear on a number of different Plods where interests and schemas overlap. Activities are often added to Plods during room planning meetings. New observations, photos and evidence relating to the new provision (activities and resources) are then collected.

The last ten years of development within the early years curriculum has firmly established a free-flow play environment. Adults working with children need to be aware or reminded of the importance of their role within the learning process and this ‘detective game’ approach.

Using Plod sheets enables both practitioners and parents to remain central to the co- constructivist approach to pedagogy, rather than bystanders watching from the sidelines or slipping back into old ways of determining the curriculum despite the child.

PLOD IN PRACTICE

Observations 
Key person, other staff and parents watch and note how child responds to provision.

Assessment 
Recent observations collected and shared. Schemas, wellbeing, involvement and interests assessed.

Implementation 
Parents try out activities 

Resources

• Extending Thought in Young Children – A Parent-Teacher Partnership, by Chris Athey (Paul Chapman Publishing)

• The Early Years Foundation Stage Pack CD-Rom outlines Plod formats – http://

nationalstrategies.standards. dcsf.gov.uk/earlyyears

• My Learning Journey – Early Years Team, Suffolk County Council

• Pen Green Research, Development and Training Base and Leadership Centre – www.pengreen.org