EEF blog: Unlocking the role of a Key Person in Early Years – Part 1
It all begins with an idea.
Gracie arrives on her first day at nursery with a blank stare. She wanders around clutching a worn-out toy monkey. There is little emotion, nor engagement. Gracie has spent most of her young life moving around from place to place. Recently, she has been taken into emergency care and is missing her mum.
Kanye started screaming on his way down the road to the nursery, clinging tightly to his Mum. He is frightened and determined not to let go.
Despite arriving early, Leila hasn’t had time for breakfast. She is feeling hungry, still in pyjama bottoms, and clearly distressed. She sits on the floor of the nursery wailing, drinking cold tea from a baby’s bottle.
Get curious
All three children have a story, but none of them has the communication, social and emotional skills to tell it. Through quite different behaviours they are each expressing specific needs – perhaps for connection, a sense of belonging or relationship – in an unfamiliar environment.
The role of the statutory key person in early years – for these three children and others like them – is crucially important.
The key person eases children’s transition from home to nursery through purposeful, well-timed action. Seemingly small gestures, like kneeling to pat Gracie’s monkey and take her by the hand at just the right moment, and quietly moving Leila to the table for a bowl of cereal, can make all the difference.
These ‘settling actions’ are embedded in the practice of the experienced key person. But these habits must be consciously embedded before they can occur naturally or without hesitation. Those who are new to the key person position may need more support to learn the ‘best’ course of action to take when faced with children who are struggling.
Adapted from ‘Putting Evidence to work: A Guide to Implementation
What research is available that links to your observations in the setting?
You can integrate your professional knowledge with evidence from research findings.
What are the underlying causes of the problem?
You can explore the problem and move beyond what children are doing to find out what they are communicating.
How do you know the evidence is trustworthy and reliable?
You can select what to read, and who to listen to. Knowing where the evidence has come from is important.
How can you deliver an intervention that is fit for purpose?
Focus not only on what, but also on how to do it. This where I start making lists!
Knowledge is the key to success
Whether you are an experienced key person or new to the role, we never stop learning.
The evidence tells us there will be more children like Gracie, Kanye and Leila coming through the doors of our early years settings. Children who need to feel connected before they can learn and make progress. If, as educators, we are committed to closing the disadvantage gap, then our intervention must start early; and your role as a key person is crucial.
EEF blog: Unlocking the role of a Key Person in Early Years – Part 2
It all begins with an idea.
Remember three-year-old Gracie, the child with the blank stare clutching her worn-out monkey? What about Kanye and Leila, sitting on the floor feeling frightened and upset?
Do you have a child in mind? Someone who craves attention in your early years setting.
A child with a story to tell, without the communication, social and emotional skills they need to tell it.
The role of the statutory key person for all these children is crucially important, and whether you are an experienced key person or new to the role, it’s vital that we keep reflecting on our practice. The key person eases children’s transition from home to nursery through purposeful, well-timed action. But they also have a crucial role in promoting young children’s learning and development once they’ve settled into their new environment.
Promoting learning across the Pedagogical Continuum
In early years settings, there are times when we, as the adult, lead learning using explicit teaching approaches. Other times, we are more spontaneous – taking advantage of a daily routine, or following a child’s line of inquiry in a way that supports their development. In this way, early years teaching is delivered across the pedagogical continuum.
As we move across the continuum, we keep a clear purpose in mind – knowing when to intervene in a way that extends each child’s learning, adapting our approach across different programmes of learning and areas of the continuous provision. Sometimes, it’s knowing when to stand back and let the child learn without interference.
Download the Early Years Pedagogical Continuum below.
This can look deceptively simple, but dig beneath the surface, and you start to see the carefully crafted complexity of teaching and learning in the early years: the team of early educators all moving skillfully between children, the balance of adult-initiated guided interaction and child-initiated activity, all carefully planned to change over the course of the day to maximise opportunities for every child to learn.
Unlocking the Evidence Store
The new Early Years Evidence Store is being developed to support the training of key people working in early years settings. It has been developed as part of the EEF’s work as an evidence partner for the DfE’s Stronger Practice Hubs. In the Evidence Store, EEF use the pedagogical continuum to show how evidence-based teaching approaches can be implemented in any early years setting.
As is demonstrated in the store, whilst the context for teaching and learning may change, the focus on deliberate, intentional interaction stays constant. Early Years Educators are shown following the ShREC approach: sharing attention, being responsive, expanding interactions, and where appropriate promoting back and forth conversation.
High Quality interactions in the Early Years – Download the shREC approach below.
So, let us go back to the child in mind – the one who craves your attention .
The exemplification from across the continuum in the evidence store helps us, as the adults, to visualise how each evidence-based teaching approach might look in our own settings, working with different age groups and in different early learning contexts.
The summaries of evidence help us to articulate what we are teaching and the reasons why.
They might even challenge us to refine or change our approaches to help that child who needs our attention.
Take a look at our Evidence Store.
EEF blog: Stumbling blocks
It all begins with an idea.
To someone unfamiliar with early years education, it is often surprising to see the kinds of resources that are used for teaching.
Why use a collection of wooden blocks of different shapes and sizes, with some carpet tubes and an empty cardboard box to teach in the early years? Wouldn’t a more structured activity be much easier?
Stumbling Blocks or Building Blocks
Open-ended and versatile, we can use block play to teach across the breadth of the pedagogical continuum, and across all seven programmes of learning. Children at different developmental stages can access the activity at the same time and we can observe their progress by how they interact and play.
In the past, early educators were required to collect ‘evidence’ to justify that learning had taken place.
It was time consuming, retrospective and often distracting. Now, there needs to be a shift in our thinking, we are considering ‘evidence’ to inform what we do, and why we do it. When you view research evidence as a ‘call to action’ it changes the way you engage with it.
I get inspiration from research to implement new approaches in my classroom. Understanding the research gives me the confidence and evidence base so I can explain it to others.
Rebecca Watkins, EYFS Teacher.
We know (Education recovery in schools in England (nao.org.uk)) that despite funding and early education recovery programmes, the disadvantage gap is widening.
We have limited resources, so it is important we use what we have efficiently and effectively to target the children who need it most.
We also know that the interaction children have with adults in the early years substantially affects their development.
So, if we are pro-active in finding out what interactions are the ‘best bets’ for children who are socio-economically disadvantaged, based on the latest research, this will either inform, change or challenge our practice and prompt us to take some action.
Consider the interactions that might be possible during versatile, open-ended block play to support a child’s personal, social and emotional development. Creating a space for construction is an opportunity for collaborative play, problem solving and negotiation. The educator will be participating alongside – modelling and teaching children how to build, maintain and sustain relationships. Introduce a picture book; like Iggy Peck Architect or Rosie Revere Engineer by Andrea Beaty and you will engage children in a conversation with you and others about emotions and feelings.
The EEF’s Early Years Evidence Store offers evidence-informed approaches you may wish to consider. You can download a summary poster of the approaches below.
EEF blog: It’s my playdough!
It all begins with an idea.
‘It’s my playdough!’
This is a familiar cry heard in early years settings, which can often quickly lead to further disagreement, disruption and sometimes aggression. It’s perhaps more common in the aftermath of Impact of COVID-19, amongst 2 – 4‑year-olds who have missed out on opportunities to socialise.
So, what do you do?
Take the playdough away?
Move the child to somewhere else?
Tell them to stop arguing?
Falling out over playdough may not feel like a significant event to an adult, but to a child, it can trigger strong emotions and reactions.
‘It’s my playdough!’ is just one of 140 short videos in the new EEF Early Years Evidence Store. This video shows how Jayne, an experienced early years educator at Roberttown Community Preschool, is using an evidence-informed teaching approach to help young children manage their emotions.
Through timely intervention, careful positioning and sensitive interaction, Jayne connects with the children, moving alongside the child where she can use key vocabulary to name emotions and explain what is happening. She involves other children to suggest how the problem could be resolved. Jayne then scaffolds how to share, take turns, meet a compromise and negotiate.
Jayne uses this approach at the playdough table, when playing with blocks, whilst sharing a book, outside in the mud-kitchen and water play.
How do we support children to manage their emotions?
The summary of evidence underpinning the Evidence Store tells us that interactions between child and educator are an important factor when children are learning to regulate their emotions. Early educators can support children by modelling how to express feelings in new ways. Increased turn-taking during conversations about emotions help to mediate children’s ability to regulate their own emotions – particularly for children experiencing disadvantage.
These ‘intentional’ adult interactions might take place in role play, creating scenarios using puppets, when sharing stories or within daily routines. Conversations with children about different ways to express or change an emotion are an important part of children learning to apply these successfully.
In the new EEF Early Years Evidence Store, developed as part of the EEF’s work as an evidence partner for the DfE’s Stronger Practice Hubs, you will find more exemplification videos like ‘It’s my playdough!’. As we view and reflect, we will see familiar early years teaching approaches that we know from the evidence are likely to improve outcomes for young children.
Shining a spotlight on these explicit teaching approaches and practices can help children manage their emotions, build knowledge and learn successfully. When early years educators are unsure how to respond to a child who is struggling socially and emotionally, these ‘best bets’ may support their teaching and next steps.
Professional conversations … about purposeful play
Bitesize professional conversations are just one way in which early years educators in the Stronger Practice Hubs are using the exemplification films in the Evidence Store to address the disadvantage gap in early years.
WATCH – ‘It’s my playdough’ – Use the video to start a conversation.
DISCUSS – Reflect on what you see in your own setting.
LEARN – Read the evidence summary for PSED and then find out from the Evidence Store which teaching approaches are recommended.
REVIEW – Find out what the evidence suggests about the teaching approaches that work well.
QUESTION – What practices could help you to implement the evidence-informed teaching approach in your setting?
How metacognitive talk can support learning
in the early years
Ben held up a line drawing of his ideas machine and explained how it might work.
“Ideas are like bubbles that pop in your head.
They float around a bit before they come out of your mouth”,
said the five-year-old.
“The bubble machine in your head is where ideas are made, some bubbles just float away because they are no good, other bubbles join up to make a bigger bubble, and some just pop out of your mouth when you didn’t know they were there!”
In this example, Ben’s thinking and talking about the learning process in his own words and pictures. It’s an example of what metacognition can look like in the early years.
Building on prior knowledge
Before this, Ben and his peers had been looking at machines and how they work. They were interested and well-motivated to learn: they understood that there needs to be an input or active ingredients that go through a process to bring about change to create an output or product.
He had built on this prior knowledge to create his design on paper.
Supporting learning conversations
There had been lots of learning conversations too: conversations while the children were building machines from loose parts, when they were creating connections to make channels of water flow along a pipe, or when there were problems to solve.
As a result, Ben understood the importance of connecting the parts, controlling the flow, and measuring the output.
It was these purposeful, playful construction activities that helped Ben to establish a frequently used, step-by-step strategy to complete a task.
Thinking aloud
The explicit modelling and teaching of vocabulary gave him the confidence to think aloud using the language of possibility -“we could try this” or “I wonder if …” - and to test out his ideas and learn from his mistakes using the language of encouragement.
His 3D constructions were recorded through clipboard designs and digital images, so they could be represented on paper as 2D designs. These shifts in perspective gave Ben new ways of looking at an object; a side view, a bird’s –eye-view.
The children in Ben’s reception class went on to find out more about the learning process; why the phrase “practice makes perfect” made sense to them; how to work together on a collaborative project; and, what to do when it all goes wrong and the machine does not work, the water channel leaks, and the elaborate structure of building blocks comes tumbling down!
All of these are important lessons in metacognition that can be revisited and reused in later years.
The role of the adult is to facilitate opportunities for these kinds of metacognitive conversations during collaborative problem solving with a child. This can help lay the foundations for structured reflection and future planning.
What the evidence says
Evidence suggests the use of metacognitive strategies, which get pupils to think about their own learning, can lead to up to seven months’ additional progress when used well. However, while the potential impact of these approaches is very high, particularly for socio-economically disadvantaged pupils, less is known about how to apply them effectively in the classroom and with younger children.
When you look at the recommendations in the EEF’s Guidance Report [LINK & Image], keeping in mind a five-year-old child like Ben, you start to see the potential and the benefits of teaching metacognitive strategies in the early years:
The teacher could develop Ben’s knowledge of how he learns by:
Activating his prior knowledge before he goes into independent practice.
Modelling their own metacognitive thinking when with Ben. ‘What do I know about problems like this? What ways of solving them have I used before?’
Proposing an appropriate level of challenge to promote Ben’s self-regulation and metacognition. For example, through questions like: “How could you make sure your tower is protected from the Big Bad Wolf?”
Using observation to assess Ben’s use of self-regulated learning skills.
Metacognition should not be an ‘extra’ task,
but built into interactions with children like Ben
as part of their daily routine, interests, and activities.