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CONTRIBUTORS
What’s going on in nursery at the moment?
This month, in our ongoing collaboration with Edge Hill University curated by ALICIA BLANCO-BAYO, Early Years Lecturer and WTEY Programme Leader at the University’s Faculty of Education, we’re delighted to hear from MAIR JONES, a third- year student on the BA (Hons) Working and Teaching in the Early Years course.
Chalmers (2016) recognises that working with respectful, strong, and positive partnerships with families and other professionals is crucial for children to develop and grow into happy, confident, and knowledgeable citizens. Early Years Practitioners should make it a priority to create positive and strong relationships with families as families are the child's educator at home (Johnston et al., 2018) – parents and carers have a rich knowledge of their child's personalities, preferences, interests, and skills and these must be considered in practice to ensure that every child is getting the education and care they need. A positive team is essential to providing and promoting high-quality
provision. When a team works well together by being able to share and understand team goals, handle disagreements respectfully and discuss one another’s views comfortably, it is reflected in the atmosphere of the workplace (Ellis, 2019), in turn leading to better opportunities for the children’s development and growth. In contrast, when a team is poorly performing in practice, stress and unhappiness will become a factor of provision (Bayliss, 2009), which will cause an unhealthy environment for the children’s wellbeing. Ward (2009) suggests that by providing parents/carers with information
and fun activities on children's learning and development, they can gain insight into, and knowledge of, their child's life in the Early Years setting. Wall displays and leaflets can provide information about activities that their children will be familiar with and can be taken home, to be used as prompts for discussion which will help children feel their families are involved in what goes on at nursery. According to the new updated Education Inspection Framework (EIF),
Ofsted will now inspect how settings are using their curricula to enhance experiences and learning through the EYFS Framework. Through Early Years practitioners enhancing children's experiences, learning and development beyond the setting and into the home, practitioners can ensure that children's cultural capital is continuously developing. Those opportunities to actively apply the skills that children are developing in the setting can and should be offered at home too. Working in collaboration with parents is crucial for establishing a
positive environment for children to learn and grow within. A reliable and affective way to build a positive relationship is encouraging a team of Early Years practitioners to work together to create a display that shows aspects of the day to day practice the children can explore with parents. A “What’s going on in nursery at the moment?” display in an area of the setting families can easily access with their children can be a good starting point of connection with parents. The idea behind this type of display is to encourage families to ask their children about what’s going on in nursery, and to give rise to conversations that can be led by the children and go in exciting directions. Families can then get involved in a more spontaneous manner. The intention is to promote and elevate the environments children are part of – together, families and practitioners can make this happen by using displays that spark discussions about ‘what’s going on in nursery’.
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www.education-today.co.uk Using technology
to aid teaching In her regular column this month, STEMtastic! founder KIRSTY BERTENSHAW looks at some great technology to help with STEM in the classroom.
Over the past few years teachers have become more confident using technology and students have benefited from the variety of learning options available. Now everyone is back in the classroom, technology can still enhance the learning experience. Here are a few simple ways apps and online platforms could be integrated into the curriculum. • Oscilloscopes are expensive and often tricky to use without experience. They also require the whole class to gather around wherever they are set up, and mostly watch. As an alternative, there are now many free mobile phone and tablet apps which show changes in waves in response to microphone input. Students can work in smaller groups and see the change in wave behaviour for the sounds they make. They can also take screen shots of different wave forms to sketch or print later. • When exploring the concept of the solar system and the movement of planets in relationship to each other, it can be hard to imagine that Earth is rotating and orbiting the sun. Using a constellation app on phones or tablets can allow students to move around and change the direction they aim the mobile phone at to find the different planets in relation to Earth’s position. Many of these apps are free and give some information about what the students are viewing too. • BiomeViewer is an available as an app for iPad or as an online interactive model on tablets and PC. It allows students to explore and compare the climate, precipitation, and animal wildlife across different biomes on Earth. Along with earth science concepts, animals from different biomes can be compared and their adaptations can be investigated and linked to how they allow organisms to survive specific conditions.
Biointeractive.org also have other virtual labs available, but BiomeViewer stands out as their most interactive simulation and most useful for the primary and KS3 curriculum. • Circuit kits are a fantastic part of the practicals used in science. Limits on availability, types of components, amount of each component and safety considerations can reduce the possibility of natural learning by just connecting components together to see what happens. Using an online circuit lab means students can connect any components together and observe the results. Also, it allows them to test in ways that we wouldn’t normally consider ethical. For example, PHET Interactive Simulations has a circuit lab that allows users to test which objects are conductors in circuits, including a human hand and a dog. No harm is allowed to come to the dog in the simulation, but it can lead to a discussion on ethics. This circuit lab can be used for series and parallel circuits, measuring the current and voltage and therefore calculating resistance, conductors and insulators. PHET Interactive Simulations have many different science and maths based interactive labs available for free, all which can be accessed on any device with an internet connection. • Guest speakers can motivate students and provide a variety to the way information can be accessed. Guest speakers can deliver talks about careers or specific fields of interest, many of which enhance the curriculum, such as a vet describing similarities between all mammals. In the past this would have meant a visitor who had to travel out to schools. Now, guests can speak to classes using online platforms such as Zoom, making it easier for both speakers and schools to access specialised knowledge, and for students to see areas or workplaces they wouldn’t normally see.
More information:
https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/biomeviewer http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/circuit-construction-kit-dc-virtual- lab/latest/
circuit-construction-kit-dc-virtual-lab_en.html
https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/filter?type=html,prototype Kirsty is the founder of STEMtastic, an education consultancy with a focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths
www.stemtastic.co.uk
March 2022
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