Recording Attainment in Continuous Provision and other stuff

 Training heads and EYFS coordinators today – looking at what excellent FS might look like and how you would know, especially if you were not an EYFS expert.

I think the only word for the day would be organic. When the delegates had \outlined their ideal expectations of the day they were not the outline of the the course that had been advertised.

But, in the spirit of all I talk about with EYFS teaching, you have to respond to the identified assessment need and change your plan. So that is what I did. It just meant a good bit of copying from one laptop to another before flashing it on the screen. My pen drive was ' smokin '!!

We looked at lots of aspects of good EYFS and discovered that most schools there were doing an awful lot of assessment and observation that had limited (if any) impact on teaching and standards. Had to ask the question why do it then? The usual answer is because it is too much of a risk to stop it. It is the ' just in case ' mentality that our Ofsted culture has driven us into!

Think tomorrow might be much the same as I am delivering in Blackpool to heads in the morning about what good EYFS looks like and then to teachers in the afternoon about planning for challenge in continuous provision.

You know how some ideas come to you in unusual places? Well last night you would have found me at the MEN Arena in Manchester watching WWE Wrestling ' Live ' with my middle son Kenzie. It was a whole new world for me. We did everything including eating a foot long hot dog (when I say hot dog – the meat content was doubtful) bought a ' t ' shirt ( I had promised this treat and let him choose it before I discovered the children's ' t ' shirts were £20 !)  ate sweets and cheered on oil smothered, sequin encrusted pant wearing, muscle men. I appreciate that sounds more like a Kylie concert but honestly…

Anyway in between bouts of testosterone fuelled fakery, I got to thinking about continuous provision conversation I had had with a teacher in Blackpool (not that she looked anything like a WWE Wrestler!)

It occurred to me that we can can put challenge into the provision in the resources that we put on the shelves, we can also do it with things like challenge cards and talking tins which encourage children to try a particular task (although with both of those there is no guarantee).

What struck me is that there must be a better way of evidencing the things that we see children do in the continuous provisions when not directed by an adult.

The sort of thing I mean is when you see or hear something that is comment worthy going on in CP and you stick in your assessment book or on a post it – what do you do with it then?

As CP is the areaof FS that most leaves itself open to vagary I thought it would be good to put those observations in one place that demonstrated exactly what goes on in each area of your CP.

The idea… A bulletin book for each CP area. As you started a new theme/topic you would stick into the book an A3 sheet (or 2 A4's) split into boxes with the name of each member of your group/class at the top of one box. You would keep the books in/around each area and then when you observed something of note you would record it in that child's box. At the end of each topic/theme you would be able to see a snapshot of who was where and what they did. More importantly you would see which children you had not got many observations on in each area at a glance. It would be much easier to reference attainment and achievement across the 6 areas

You would keep the books as a record of the type of attainment your CP encouraged.

Maybe I should go to WWE more often!

Alistair