WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. I'm really, really excited tonight, um, to have Alistair here with us. Um, and I loved Alistair's work for a long, long time. Um, read all his books. Um, when I was putting all the training together, there was a lot of his information that I used when creating Tell's toolkit, um, and I hunted him down and gave him cake and persuaded him to become my friend. It is true. So, so, um, so yes, I'm really, really excited. But Alistair, um, I'll hand over to you in a minute. Alistair's got loads of amazing books and we're gonna put lots of links to those online. Um, has got a fantastic blog with loads of information. Um, and we've done some blogs for you as well. Yeah. Um, and there's lots of, we have and there's lots of links to some amazing resources and some different things on there that you can follow. Um, and we've linked into some of your policies as well. So we've got your superhero play one on our, on our members area, which is great. Um, but yeah, Alistair is gonna be chatting today about Doji and Mus for writing and early writing and Mark making and lots of stuff around boys and engaging boys. So I'm gonna hand over to you now Alistair and let you chat. Thanks Kate. That's alright. Good to be here. And very nice to be invited by Kate, which is great. Um, and we did a little test earlier on Kate and I just to make sure it was working early this morning and since then I'm pleased to see we both had a bath. Yeah, Kate asked me along to, well she did press gang me into being a friend really by offering me, uh, and also giving me my own little tail toolkit back. And I had come across Tales Toolkit and was thrilled to have Kate do blogs for me because I think it's a really brilliant resource. I was just saying to Kate earlier on, the hard bit is getting it out there into schools and settings so that people can see how good it is and have a little go at it. I think the videos and things that she posts are brilliant for that. So a lot of the work that I do is some of you already will know is working with uh, all aspects of early is really looking at promoting the most effective early years practice we can get. Trying not to just jump on a new gon that comes along, but to really look at what uh, makes really effective child led learn. Um, I was never originally a child led learning practitioner. I was very much a choke and talk practitioner, which is how I was taught to do it. So I was trained in the late eighties, early nineties. So I was very much an advocate of the integrated day and worksheet based was how I was taught to do it. Topics that you planned, well literally years in advance and you had nice planning formats and every, we sat in the car but you said things of wonderment to children, um, whether they were engaged or not, it didn't matter. They then went and sat at the table, they kind of did an activity, you then pulled them back together, you talked to them again, again about things of wonderment, sent 'em off to do more activities. And also in those days if you were having a carpet session on shape, then you would expect everybody to go off and do a shape activity and until we pull them all back together and then we did something else. So we know now that EIFS that that's not the best way that children learn. And what we're trying to do is get a really good developmentally appropriate curriculum going. And that's a phrase that I kind of use too much. But we need to think really hard about where are children, not in terms of how old they are but where are they in their stage of development. And yes, we can use things like earlier outcomes and development matters a really good guideline for where children might be at this stage of development. But they are exactly that. They're a guideline. And what we've gotta be really wary of in early years is using like a tick list, which we're often encouraged to do, especially by senior management sometime that you need to be accountable. Uh, so you tend to use your early years outcomes and development. That is just a next step, whether here, so we've gotta get to here and actually know that children don't learn in a linear way. Um, they are all over the place and they're learning. They have peaks and troughs, they have spurts. Um, and what we need to do is take into account the whole child, which is dead easy to say, but in a class of 30 children and very diverse needs, uh, can be very difficult to do. So anything that promotes quality talk, quality interactions, 'cause it's through talk and interactions that you really get to know children when you are talking at them and then you send them off to do activities, then you bring them back and you talk at them again is not the same as when you talk with them. Then you play with them, then you observe them in their play, you evaluate those observations, they lead to next steps and that's when you get a really rich picture. And so one of the things I love about tools tail toolkit is the fact that I can't even say it, but uh, it allows for lots of opportunity to uh, individualize and also to work with children's interest, which is brilliant. So you are not always retelling the story of gold boxing for your bears, you know, which has lost its interest when you've heard it 3000 million times. You're often telling a story that's unique and individual and what it takes it where a child's imagination wants to take it. So when I'm looking at it, right, which I do a lot, I get asked a lot about, uh, well how did children start in the writing process and how did it start? Become story, become storytellers. Uh, how can I engage boys in the writing process? I tend to have a writing tables full of girls who actually probably when they're there don't do a lot of writing, do a lot of coloring in, but at least to go to the writing table. And I have a writing table that seemed to be devoid of boys most of the time 'cause they're outside on a scooter going on 90 miles an hour, taking out some woman in a tab out with these small girls. And so then sometimes people think I know what I'll do. I'll shift my writing table, I'll put one outside as well. And what I'll do, the one outside is I'll maybe get a pirate oil cloth or a bit of a camouflage netting and I'll have my camouflage ing table. And then all the boys who don't like writing indoors will suddenly love it because it's outside and it's got a pirate cloth in the table. But again, rarely do I find that's the case. Mainly who you get at your outside lighting table are the girls that you've chucked out from inside. 'cause all they do is sit inside on the lighting table. So eventually you say, right, get out, you have not been out six months, you are blue, go outside and they go outside with a coat on and they go, Ooh, there's a writing table. I sitting right at that. So when we are looking at uh, what inspire children to be writers, first of all what I look at is have they got something to write about? And again, that's the importance of story and the importance of storytelling. So for me, strands to become a really effective writer, whatever your preference for learning is, one is your ability to talk because writing is only talk that comes out of interview pencil. So if you can't say it, you can't actually write it. So often, especially in schools, we spend far too much time focusing on the handwriting aspect of writing and not enough time on the talk element. And by that I don't just mean talk in circles and passing the teddy and passing the talk and stick and I don't just mean show and tell, it's your turn, you know, once every 20 odd weeks. I mean that obviously for quality talk with adults on a daily basis where adults know where your gaps are in terms of your language and your imagination and your talk. And that they plan those into play. And not just in a talk and exercise on the carpet or in small groups, but also talk through construction, talk through sand, talk through creativity, whatever you might be involved in. Take the talk to where your interest lies as opposed to pull you out of where your interest is to come and do talk. So we use lots of mechanisms like the little mini mes, the photographs of your children. They can use uh, lots of mechanisms for planning talk and taking it into continuous provision so that one adult who's working in the provision might have a objective LED plan. So one that's not an activity but it's an objective and they take that into play but it's talk based. So even though they're observing, they're assessing, uh, they're recording, um, they're interacting, they're resetting, but they're also delivering this talk objective to children. And that can be around language development or story or any bit of that. So good quality talk, lots of talk and not just adults talk and children tends to talk too. Then another big aspect of being a successful writer is the physical development aspect. And that's crucial and it's often ignored. We often ask children earlier to do things that they can't actually physically do because their body muscle to hasn't developed. It allows them to do that. Then the third bit is the whole phonic element of it. The fact that children get that realization that they can recognize sounds at the beginning end of words. And actually they start to realize that these little squidly symbols that look like tadpoles, they carry meaning. Uh, although I don't know exactly what meaning to carry, I know that when we're read to people off point to those squidly things and around our classroom space, we've got these squidly things going on and then they begin to link sounds to letters often through their own name to start off with and we begin to get that early emergent phonic knowledge and then we're off with our phonics. But again, you can spend your entire life doing phonics and I think some of you who are in reception probably thinking your entire life doing phonics, especially at this end of year when you wanna get those GDS and you are saying to children literally at London White, you red group and green group, you can go to lunch. Yellow group you are staying in at lunchtime for your 26th session phonics 'cause we need to get you to that GLD if it kills us. Otherwise our percentage increase won't be high enough. Uh, but actually again we're looking at child-led, um, experience. The more you can link what children are learning to what they're interested in, then the more chance you're gonna get of what high level engagement it's gonna give you high level attainment. So we know physically the children can't do beautiful handwriting if they haven't ability to do it. We also know that emergent uh, writers are really just tool users. We weren't kind of born to write, uh, historically, uh, going back in time, uh, following Darwin's, you know, theory of uh, evolution. We were born and developed as human beings who used tools. And for us a pencil is one of those tools as much as a kind of an arrow or a a sword or a a knife would've been kind of way back then. So our body is structured in a way that it develops levels of dexterity to assist us in that tool use both large and small. So we know early developers and children pull themselves up under their feet and they're doing lots of that cruising thing at that age and stage of development, which is fairly early on. Often way before too. They've got two big muscle groups that are well developed across their chest and their shoulders and up at their neck and then across their core, their bottom and their legs 'cause that kind of holds up their core gives you a center. And this at top is very well developed because we do lots of reaching and stretching and grabbing when we are babies. Also in your hand you've got two lovely um, groups of muscle called your palm arches, the two of those in your hands and they're connected to the tendons, they help with your fingers and when you're a baby you do some parch development because do lots of grasping and grabbing and a strengthen those. So we are often working with the children from two upwards. They've got two lovely big centers of muscles and they're beginning to be more and mobile, beginning to be more dexterous but they haven't got high level dexterity. So you're beginning tool user will often use what's called a Palmer supinate grasp. So they will take their, whatever it is, their pencil, their pen and hold it in their palm in a fist with the uh, implement pointing down and they often then will have a fairly straight arm and they will pivot from their shoulder. So early tool users, early makers are shoulder pivoters and palm grippers. Now when they begin to consolidate that shoulder movement, the pivot will change. So if you know and you can repeat your children and think right, have I got a lot of children who are still palm grip and who are still shoulder pivoting? I need to have lots of things in my space that encourage that. So on my Malibu materials table, I'm gonna have lots of things that encourage that large stretching rotation movement. Also, I really wanna develop those palm marches because that's gonna help with with finger dexterity. So I'm also gonna have things for them to squeeze and manipulate. So when I'm thinking about the BLE materials in my space, when I think about some of the activities I do, I'm gonna be thinking about developing shoulders and developing hands. So I'm gonna get children to work across their body, I'm gonna get 'em to try and hit things. So in your outdoor area, I know ideally you do want like a million tennis balls and a million rackets 'cause then you just end up with balls all over the place. But you can do a dead easy thing where you get like a lovely nylon washing line and the leather of a pair of tights and there is no self-respecting earlier setting out there that hasn't got at least six pairs of Tesco's own American tan in their stock cupboard because they are ultimately useful. You know, you just chop the leg off at the gusset. Uh, you can, you can stuff it, you can make vines out of it. You can do what, you can wear it on your head, you can do what you like. But today we're gonna get a ball and drop into the foot of the ides. We're gonna string a bit of washing line lon best. Then we're gonna tie the top of the tights on the nylon washing line. So you've now got a brawl hanging in a leg of per tights and give them a nice big-headed racket and get them to whack the ball and the ball will then shoot from one end of the washing line to the other. It doesn't disappear somewhere into your outdoor area. You can even do this as an indoor. If you've got space stick somebody else at the other end whack they're gonna whack it back or hang them as I saw the other day from somebody who done from the veranda. And it stapled these tights that use a slightly thicker time like a woolly type and they were getting children on the veranda just to hit the ball in the tight, which was then swinging out and swinging back in. But all of that was done to develop your super body. So loads of things you can do. Uh, when this is quite consolidated automatically for most children, the uh, pivot will shift and it moves from the shoulder to the elbow. So what happens is they had a fairly straight arm up until this point still upon the supinate grasp. Then they start to bend their elbow. There are two types of elbow pivot. There's an emergent elbow pivot where the shoulder's still strong and the elbow literally bends and then they start to do lots of shoulder work like this. So you do lots of up and down and back and forward work. And then there's a more advanced elbow pivot where the forearm then begins to move independently of the shoulder. So they're gonna bend at the elbow and they're gonna start to move their forearm in and out. So they've now got a much bigger range of movements. You've got figure eight, you've got all sorts of stuff going on patternmaking. So for your elbow pivots still palm supinate grasping when the elbow pivot and they won't change this, you need to and put lots of things in your environment, they're gonna support that movement of the elbow. Things like sewing, cutting, stirring, mixing, painting with large bushes, painting from a distance. So you developing that whole upper body thing. So again, look for lots of examples of things you can do for elbow pivot. When we've consolidated that, then the pivot shifts again and the elbows tend to stuck in stick in a palm supinate grasp still and then they move to be wrist pivots. So 10 things tend to get a lot smaller at this stage and we get a lot of of this going on. Often their legs have been quite wide over this point because they are balancing their center of gravity when they do these large movements. By the time they get here their legs come in so they're a lot more straight in their GA and then they do this kind of working bit. If you've got a child that's uh, wrist pivoting, then it's a real sign that their grip is gonna change. And so as practitioners you can watch for children who are doing a lot of this wrist work and know that that might make an implement whatever it may be, is gonna start shifting. 'cause when you get to your wrist, next obvious bendy bits are in your hands. So often children will change their palm supinate grasp. Sometimes they will release one finger and bend their wrist at the right angle like that and then they manipulate. They might make an implement with their finger and that's called a digital pronate grasp. Doesn't matter what you call it but as long as you recognize it. More often than not they go from having a palm of supinate grasp to then just spreading their fingers out and they hold their mark making implement between their thumb, the four fingers and they grip it tight. And that's called an expanded tripod grip. So something like that with a nice mark making in there. Sometimes they took two fingers behind it but two in front and it slots down to that space in there. That's called an inverted tripod grip. And then eventually ideally they work that tripod to triangulate and grip the one where you'd hold your pencil. That tends to happen. The shift in the hand tends to happen usually around about nursery into reception. It often happens when children begin to link sounds to letters. So sometimes the nightmare you have as a reception teacher is you get the coincidence between I'm Lincoln sounds to letters, I'm starting to record those letters but I'm using an incorrect grip or not developing. So therefore I become very used to doing my early writing with an incorrect or not quite yet formed grip. And the hard bit about that is if I learn those skills early on, they're the things that stick. So it's really hard to untrain me then to stop doing an expanded tripod where I hold my pencil like that and suddenly trying to teach me to hold my pencil like that. There are loads of strategies you can use to support children with that and at this point when I'm doing writing work, we would come in with a thing called either Jedi writing or princess writing or um, pirate writing, which is a method of teaching a letter formation using gross motor. Uh, rather than say the children, I'm gonna wait until you can write and then I'm gonna tell you what you've written is incorrect and we're gonna sit down at this table and do your handwriting practice. So I know Kate mentioned at the beginning that I have a blog, which is just a, b, c does do OE s.com and things like uh, Jedi writing and shoulder pivots and pencil grips. If you search those you'll get loads more information about that 'cause obviously we've got a very short space of time and I could talk about it all night then we wouldn't have time anything to say. So when I am looking at a really effective uh, writing environment, it's really gonna support children in their writing. One element we're looking at is good quality provision for talk so that children have the opportunity to be storytellers both to tell their own story, which as you'll all know is very important to them. Nobody's involved important story to them and they can't wait to tell their story. And also the ability to tell somebody else's story as in an imagined story. So um, having those two, it's a provision uh, that went alongside each other in your space is really good. Uh, because when children get a chance to speak and talk and tell, then they're building vocabulary, they're building self-confidence and again any details toolkit that allows children to develop that story and develop that story language and become familiar with how that happens, massive benefit. And also adults we have to model. So modeling is great in terms of storytelling. Both again, telling your real life story and your life story. They love nothing better than hearing about. You know, when I was teaching I used to say, you know, my big boys are doing this and then I did this and then we went there. And they love that fact that you've got a life outside of school and you know that you don't actually live on the sink and you wanna see you in Tesco and they look at you like you are an alien from out of space that they've never seen before. Whilst their parents are looking into your shopping basket to see how many bottles of wine you are putting into your basket and you feel the need to say they're not all three, I'm having a party. Uh, when really we know the arches for you. Uh, but that idea that you can also share with children is great. The mobbing aspect of their years is fantastic. So you also want an environment with continuous provision that allows for children to explore their own interests and talk through continuous provision. And again, that's a whole other webinar on its own with this idea that continuous provision is to continue the provision for learning in the absence of an adult. What continuous provision isn't, it's just resources that are just continually available. So when we're planning that space, we're thinking about all the skills we wanna develop with children, personal social being top of the list because if you can't engage with somebody else on a personal social level, if your own levels of wellbeing aren't high enough, you're not gonna be an effective learner. And then thinking high level engagement is gonna give you really high level 10. So are my children really engaged when they're with me? They're they engaged because I am able to engage in 'cause I am and I can do a lot this and that and have you seen this? No, we could do that. But more importantly when they leave me and they're not with an adult, are they still engaged? And that's a key question for us in early years because we wanna look at that space that exists outside the eye and think to ourselves, do you know what I can see high level engagement. Those children are busy and they're busy doing something productive. But I can also see that they're doing things that are linked to progress and attainment. They've not just gone back to things that are very familiar things they've been doing last year, the year before, which sometimes is the case often I find in writing areas. So I know in the schools I work with a lot, no I'm not a huge fan of a writing table as such. Those writing tables often cause children to stagnate and they're learning. I tend to find on the whole, although it's not binary, that writing tables tend to be full of girls who tend to enjoy the process more. They tend not to be full of boys who tend to be anywhere other than the writing table because they're too worried that either some girls say or one of us is gonna turn up with an assessment sheet because you saw a boy in the writing area and thought you must take the opportunity to carry out a quick assessment. Um, but also when I've done writing projects looking at effective use of writing and continuous provision and we've looked at which children go to the writing table, it's often the same children that go, we looked at how long they spent at the writing table and they often spent quite a long time at the writing table. But more crucially we looked at what they produced at the writing table when there was no adult. We're not talking about a direct challenge where you've said I want you to go to that table and do this. Even then that wasn't doing so well. This is about children in continuous provision and what we found was across the board that what they produce is usually very, very low level mark making even when they're capable of so much more because they go back to that familiar spot where they can take all your post-it notes and take one felt tip and make one mark on every single post-It notes that nobody else can use them. We also found that um, the most common thing that happens at the writing table when there's a group of children is that they play school. Uh, not that they sit and go tell you what shall we do, shall we do a retailer of Goldilocks? But when we do, shall we take like a different twist on it and maybe three beds of really aliens? How would that look in a story? You sit and go, right, I'm in charge looking at me, show me good listening. What's this one saying? What's that one saying? And they basically pay you in that right area. The mistake we make often as adults is we look up and we think, oh they're busy so that's all good. And actually what we need to be saying is they are busy but what are they busy doing? And also who isn't there and when's their opportunity to write? So all those children who avoid the writing table 'cause they know they don't enjoy the process or they think they don't enjoy the process, are there opportunities for Mark making writing for them in the spaces that they do inhabit? So often in my early year spaces I will take out the formal writing table and just ensure that there are lots and lots and lots of opportunities for Mark making and right I think in lots of different areas. And so I'm create little mark making spaces that are themed around interest or maybe something you are talking about at the moment. So you might have a little lac table for two that you got from Ikea for 5 99 and you might dress that table around annual Superman or Batman and say, right, this is our Batman messages table When you come here we're writing a message to Batman. This is our Jolly Portman table. Only two of you can come at a time. And I've got some lovely letter writing things and some lovely pictures from the book that we've talked about. When you can put this table, we are writing letters, I don't care who you write a letter to, when you come here, you come into a letter, you don't come here to tip in a picture or to play teacher. And if I find you without tipping in a picture, I will snap off your fingers and stick them up your nose. You could go there or you could just imply that by saying when you come to the space, this is what we, there's loads of spaces for you to write and mark make. You can write over there, you can draw over there, you can color over there. But when you, from here, this is what we do. And when you are in construction there are bulletin books, there are spiral bound books, there is graph paper. When you are in the water area, there's lots of laminated blank sheets, there are laminated line sheets, they're laminated spread paper so that you can actually do some mark making water when you are in the mbu materials area. We've also enhanced that with small notebooks, uh, lists, numbers, all sorts of stuff where you can mark make as part of your play and also you've given me massive opportunities as an adult to come play alongside you. And maybe if it's appropriate to scaffold that play by saying, rather than saying Oh I love what you're doing there, shall we go to the mark making table and do a label or write a plan or can say in the play, how about or not even say how about just start doing it And you will find most of the time if you model well as an adult, they will then become engaged in that process. So I do find when I'm looking for quality writing that often a mark making table in continuous provision can get in the way and cause a bit of stagnation. So places where children can play and places where children could talk but also places where children can mark, make and write as part of their play. High level engagement is your key to high level attainment and when you take that engagement away so that child stop doing that and come here and do this, sometimes you lose them in that process because they were really enjoying what they were doing over there and actually they don't wanna come and sit with you and count multilink towers of 10. And what you could have done is taken your concept of count into 10 but take it into their play or your concept of mark making right and take, take it into their play or your concept of storytelling and take it into their play. So all the time for me when I'm thinking about continuous provision, I'm thinking outside of an adult and if the adult is good, the learning will be good Outside of that adult in this brilliant learning space we've got, which massively motivates children to play 'cause they just learn to play. Does it continue the provision for learning or are we stifling children's learning a little bit bit by either putting low level resources in there and make them go back to familiar or we pull them out of there to say come and learn with us. Like what we wanna be saying is go and learn in there. And the other element of that is sometimes 'cause we love a topic, we love a topic but sometimes we over theme our continuous provision. So we're gonna talk about something, we're gonna talk about goldlock affairs and I'm gonna read you the story and I'm gonna read it brilliantly and I'm gonna model voices and I'm gonna model language who's been sitting in my chair's gonna be amazing. And then when you leave me, you are all captivated by my story. I'm gonna be saying to you in my small world there is gold deluxe puppets and three bears puppets and I've sprinkled some por js in the bottom just for a bit of texture to carry on the story. And in my role play it's goldlock and three bears house. So we've done the headbands and we've done the ears and we've done the plats and in the painting area, can you paint a bear? And in the valuable materials area can you make a bear out out a flavored dough and you know, and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes. So your whole space is themed around go locks in three bears. And then we often wonder why when the children leave the carpet and start in that play space on their own, they start to disengage from the joy of goldlock. And frankly the answer is 'cause it's du when you were reading that story on the carpet and you were doing all the voices and it was great, they loved it but when they got the painting here, it shouldn't be about can you paint a bear because I'd want to paint this. I'm not interested in bears. I love the story. I also don't need to paint a bear. There's nothing in the EYFS that says a child has to paint a bear while they're doing a good luck topic or they will die. So the painting area should be about we're experimenting with this texture, we're experimenting with these resources, we've introduced this sort of brush, we're mixing our own paint. I don't care what you paint, I might have given you a provocation, a little enhancement linked to gold deluxe. But you can paint what you like. Paint, dinosaurs, paint the whole paint in more model in the modeling area, the Malibu materials we are looking at um, joining or we are looking at coiling or we're looking at texture or we're looking at whatever it may be. And yes I might put a little provocation in there around uh, good blocks and three bays. But I can't say to you, can you make a bear? 'cause that's not a requirement. I can say to you, can you join? Can you model? Can you enhance, can you create texture? So I don't care what you make as long as you are experimenting with this skill and that way I get a far higher level of engagement from you than I would do if you said you have to be able to do that. So when you come to the Goldilocks small world area, I can't say you have to small world play Goldilocks. 'cause most children don't want a small world play. Goldilocks, especially when Goldilocks runs for fortnight. And that small world more world play area is Goldilocks in the morning and in the afternoon for an hour's play for fortnight, it will get door for us. Nevermind then. So what you're saying is in a small world area, I think to myself, right, why do I have a small world area? Which is a good question to ask yourself about any provision in the early years. Why do we have sand? Why do we have water? What skills do children develop through small world lots related to story and talk and character and social interaction and all that kind of stuff. So if I just put out Glocks in the three bears as gorgeous as my hand knitted prune set is it cost me 40,000 million pounds. Does that actually allows children to explore all of those skills that we have a small world area for? Or does it narrow their experience down to reenacting the story of all blocks in the three bears? In which case if I don't know the story, I'm not interested in the story, I'm excluding children from continuing the provision for learning in small world. But if I have a bank of resources that allow them to create any kind of story that lives in their head and mini knees and representative figures and blocks to build with and fabric to drape and boxes to stack, um, within that small world space and maybe some dinosaurs following an interest and maybe some fairies following an interest and maybe with the Goldilocks, what I'm then doing is continuing provision for learning in small world and enhancing it is a thing that I'm talking about. And then as an adult I might model, I might scaffold, I might just observe in the distance and do nothing. I might observe and record but I've got huge options open to me benefit developing children's language and children's story that aren't just related to developing their story knowledge around gold. Lock in three bears if they're with a dragon dragon in it, if they've made an under the sea, if they've made a rocket that goes the space, imagine the breadth of story language you can get out of that and talk and description and all that kind of stuff. But if we only give them Goldilocks, we're only gonna get Goldilocks from the children. How remotely interested in Goldlock if we give them open-ended resources, maybe a little bit of goldlock enhancement, we're gonna get Goldlock knows that wanna do Goldilocks. But we're also gonna get a plethora of learning opportunities for language talk and story development and children who are developing their own imagination. And then the role of the adult becomes just poor scaffold to enhance, to carry on. So outside of that really important role that we do as adults where we debate and we stimulate and we deliver really effective learning, we've gotta think about that amazing play space, which is the third educator. It does a really good job for us when we're not there, but only if we let it. And the more narrow your base is, the more themed your base is, the less effective a space it is. Yes, enhance not every area all the time but really you wouldn't expect to see any early years space that was entirely linked to one particular theme. So if you're talking about whatever the Gruffalo your classroom shouldn't look like, everything's related to G Gruffalo. If you're talking about people that help us, it shouldn't all be related to the vet or all be related to the dentist because children have gotta have provision that they're able to explore, you know, for active learning purposes, for creating and thinking critically purposes. And if I've never been to the vet and you've give me that role play, you give me that small world, I'm not entirely sure. My question kind of would be what's your expectation of play If you give a child a vet as a small world, a really lovely vet, well lots of gorgeous resources, but they've never been to the vet, they've never experienced the vet, they've only heard you talk about the vet and the tops and Tim went to the vet. What do you expect that they will do in their independent play? How do you expect that they will develop all those language and story skills of small world if you are giving them a vet that they can't relate to because they're not familiar with it? Some children with a high level of language and a high level of imagination can come in above the unfamiliar and use those resources to create themselves a different story. But a lot of children, especially the ones we tend to target who don't have high level of imagination, don't have a high level of vocabulary. They just struggle. Which is why you either get, I'm the mommy, I'm the daddy, you know, I'm making a cup of tea, which is that very early development of role play. Or you get, I am a killer dog and you are all gonna die or super vet fights off villains with a gun and we just find ourselves getting very frustrated then that they're not playing vet or they're not playing farm or they're not playing whatever it may be. But really it's because they haven't got the capacity to do that. So if you wanna develop really good thinkers, really good talkers, lots of opportunity for adults to scaffold imagination, you want your continuous provision to be as open-ended as you can make it. And the way to get it like that is to think, well why do we have it in the first place? If I am gonna have a malleable materials area, why am I having it? If I'm gonna have a role play area, why do I have it? What skills do children develop through role play? And then I look at my space and think, does my space allow that to happen or does my space look amazing? Which is so over themed with an area that my children are not familiar with that they can't access it. And then what we might do in that role play space, if you are talking about the vet is adding some vet enhancements so that any children who experiment with vet can, any adult that wants to scaffold around vet and use the language can. But when there is no adult, there is no expectation that they will play a vet because we acknowledge that they can't pay a vet or whatever else they be. So always underlying everything we're doing is this thought of are we giving children skills that they can then take on board to use independently or are we giving them activities which they may think of in terms of it being an activity that exists in its own little activity bubble. And what we want is the skills bit. So we're not all about can you paint a bear? We're all about can you mix your own paint? We are all about, we're introducing these great big fat brushes and you just dip the ends into the paint and then you do something in a different way on the paper. You don't brush with them, you are almost stabbed with them and they give you this really bushy hairy effect. These are new for our painting area. What are you gonna paint that looks big and hairy could be a bear, could be a granddad, could be a monster. Or you might just go all modern art and just experiment with that brush. But then what I've taught you is how to use a tool you could then use later on in your own creative work. If I said to you, can you paint a bear? I'm not giving you the same sort of tools, I'm not giving you the same sort of experience. So high level engagement, I'm gonna say it again 'cause it is I love phrase 'cause it's true. High level engagement is your link to high level attainment and high level engagement comes from children's own as well as your ability to tell 'em things they don't already know in a way that excites them. So there's gotta be that balance between child initiated, adult led and part of the adult led role is to say, have you seen this? Did you know this? This is amazing. And dinosaurs being in our classroom, we found a message in a bottle. You know, the Easter bird is laid in chocolate egg and how we gonna look after it and what's gonna hatch out of it? All of those things that we need to stimulate great. But when we are then thinking about children at play, it's that level of self-motivation where they want to visit spaces because those spaces appeal to them, not because they're bought and there's nothing else to do. And that can be a tough balance to find, uh, but when you found it, it can be great. And then for me, the role of the adult is to spend as much time with children in play as possible, take an objectives into the space and not too much time pulling children out of the space to come and learn separately. Because then again, sometimes you lose that kind of uh, interest in between the construction area and the multilink table. Some of that interest does kind of leak out a little bit. Whereas if you could just take what you were going to teach and try and take it into play space whilst encouraging children and supporting them in their development, you get a far higher level of engagement, which tends to mean the learning sticks a lot better. Uh, anybody got any specific questions that I've waffled on about there about Lords? Oh yeah. Got a question. Violence play. How do you deal with it? So what are your thoughts on that? Basically when you, I stuffed the very beginning, I was always taught that you did not encourage any sort of superhero gun play at all. It was a nono. So I went through my entire teaching career saying I hope that's not a gun. We don't do guns here. And then as a head exactly the same, we were a non weapons school. Now there's a difference between superhero weapon bay and violent play. And there's a kind of a spectrum that exists within both. And I was working in a setting about two weeks ago now and the issue they were having was a 4-year-old who was playing Walking Dead. So this wasn't your average 4-year-old zombie play where they're just scoo zombies where they go, I'm gonna gonna kill you and blah blah. He was doing the whole, you've gotta stab them in their head to kill them because if you don't stab them in their head, they're gonna come back. So he was wrestling people to the ground in the role play area and start trying to stab them in the head with various things. And we kind of then as a staff having a big discussion 'cause the staff were really distressed by that. That was where a lot of the children who was rugby tackle and then trying to stab them in the head. Yeah, and, and listen my daughter, him going home and doing that at home, but it's a play is a really complex thing with children and this kind of violent play superhero play again depending on which camp it falls into, if they've just being superheroes and it's like Kapow kapow and I'm gonna defeat you and you are a body and I'm gonna lock you in my jail. That is perfectly normal power play that all children go through. We know that the majority of children who engage in superhero play, it's not really about the weapons at all in life. As adults we have to learn or as human beings we all assume positions of power subtly and very obviously. So in your everyday existence with your children, with your partner, with your colleagues, there'll be times when you hold the conversation. There'll be times in your a decision maker. There'll be times when you hold a position of, of power within a moment, within a conversation or within a a a role. We know children do not have a lot of power in their lives at all. Which is why a lot of them, especially when they hit two and they discover they can use that magic word no, that suddenly gives them a massive amount of power that they've never had before. 'cause pre two, when you totally do something, you do it or it's done to you, you're fed, you're bathed, you put to bed When you get to two and you realize you can go, well I'm not doing that, thank you very much, I don't want that. Thank you very much. Mm-hmm. That's all about embodiment of power. If I role play with you and I shoot you, bang bang, you are dead. You die in our little game, you get up again. We play on, I haven't thought in my head, I am gonna mortally wound this person. I'm gonna take their life. I'm using the symbol of a gun. What I'm thinking is in our game, which when we play um buddies, we run a lot. It's quite exciting. It's a bit like hide and seek. So you get a little adrenaline rush as well with buddies. 'cause it's all about can you catch me? Can you not catch me? And even as an adult, if somebody's chasing you, you know, or when you play hide and seek as an adult, if you do still maybe on a Saturday night after Yeah. But when you're in the wardrobe and you're thinking, oh I'm gonna wait or I'm gonna laugh for, and it's quite exciting. So you all children have exactly that same response, which is like why they like chase games. 'cause it brings that event genuinely because your flight or fight kicks in even though it's a game. So there's lots of subtle elements about why they play and why they enjoy it, but it's not really about killing somebody. It's about rehearsing. Mm-hmm. That power shift. Which is why in every school I have ever worked in anywhere in the world and every practitioner I've ever talked to has said Mm-Hmm. I have never had a year in my entire career where I haven't had children who play bodies, robbers, superheroes because it's, it's actually some people regard it as schematic play. Mm-Hmm. In the same way that you would look at things like enclos trajectory or things like that. This idea of power schema can exist within play. Mm-Hmm. When children then become to step outside of that and you get violence that comes into the play, then we are going in slightly different direction. We know the children role play things to normalize them. If you are four or five years old and something has happened or you've seen something in your life that is not normal to you, then your brain can't assimilate it. As adults, our brains are full of experience so we can often assimilate things. Uh mm-Hmm. But if they're not, if we can't assimilate it, then adults we have issues because we can't. So it's not extremely children, but post-traumatic stress disorder, that inability to assimilate something that's happened. So I have seen the Walking Dead. I have seen Grand Theft Auto, I have got older siblings or my parents or I don't mind what I watch. I've got access to the internet. So I have seen some things that I really shouldn't have seen and I don't quite understand what I saw. But actually when I saw it, I did get a little adrenaline rush. Not necessarily a positive one, but it was quite exciting. It's like it's adults. When we watch a horror movie, we know it's a film. We know it's not true. We know they are actors, but still you have to put all the lights on in the house still. You will not look in the mirror when you brush your teeth in case bloody Mary pops up and other side you the toilet in the night. Exactly. This is not true. So if you are four and you've seen something similar, you can't assimilate that in your head. It doesn't make any sense. You've got that weird thing that as an adult you will watch a home 'cause you enjoy being scared. Whereas as a 4-year-old you might watch something like a zombie movie because the, there's something about the fright that is a little bit addictive. It's to do with the, the kind of adrenaline release get. So you will see children who then find a safe space and try and make sense through role play and replay. So often when you get children who are getting in violent play like the Walking Dead child, what they're trying to do is normalize some that they've seen. Now what we've setting have done previously is to say don't do that. We don't do that here. That's not very nice when you are going to stab whoever in the head. That's not a nice thing to do. And that child acknowledges that language but still playing in their head, is this need or more schematic need to be able to revisit it? To revisit it, to revisit it. So 0.1, it's a compliment to you in a really bizarre way that they are secure enough in your space to revisit that. Mm-Hmm. But also what we found was the most productive with the Walking Dead child and similarly with other children who do violent play, is rather than saying stop the play and close the play as adults, they took on the play. So they weren't going and trying to stab children in the head, but they were engaging with the child in the play. But then causing the play to say, talking about what you, you look angry, you look upset, talk about what you're feeling. And took that play in a very different way. And then as adults saying, oh you know when you are doing that, that that makes an adult articulate into children the way that other children are not capable of how that makes me feel when you do that. Do you feel frighten when you do that? Blah blah blah. And that had a far more power, far more powerful from that child than just saying, we don't do that here. Stop it. Because all they will then do is do it behind your back. I think it's fair enough if you've got a group of often boys who superhero plays starts to tip into and it often does 'cause they get carried away. So they start pushing and tripping. And then that's not that. That's just children whose players getting too physical and too exuberant. 'cause they're very physically literate at that age. There is nothing wrong with an adult in saying, I love your superhero weapon play. I love the fact that you, you can do this, you can do that, but within this space, that's acceptable. And that is not so, and that is not acceptable because, so if you engage in that sort of play, it will have to stop. But as long as it stays under this umbrella, then it, it's good. One of the most powerful things that you can do is to ask children to talk about. So again, another setting, just normal superhero wedding play going on, lots of girls didn't like it, particularly in this space just happened to be girls, lots of boys engaging in it. And the boys were rampaging through and knocking girls over and you know, tying the railings by their PLAs and poking in the sticks. And so what the adult did was to sit everybody down and say with a big kind of, it was almost like a dynamic risk assessment. And she put playing superheroes, what I love, what I don't love. And you start with the what I love bit interesting, right? Who loves to play this and this and why I love, why do you love it? 'cause you get to run about, you get to chase where the badies there the goodies do. And so she wrote all these things down and then she said, write what don't we love about it? And the children have that opportunity to say, I get frightened when the boys will pass me shouting. I don't like it when I've set something up and they run through it and they break it. And so then as a group that sat and said, right, if we look at our, our risk assessment that we've done, it's great that you love that and I don't to stop loving it. But if you are gonna have that sort of play, you need to be considerate of everybody's feelings, which we are. So yes, this can carry on if you can find strategies for not making people feel that way for not breaking the stuff that they've done. And so then they all came up with, well if we played over there and if we did that and if we didn't do that, and again that was a really good talk process where children took some accountability for their own play and by the time they get, you know, to, to four and five and more than capable of doing that. And then when the play was beginning to go in that direction again the adult was able to say, we all decided that this is what that was gonna look like. And that's not what it looks like to me. Rather than the adult saying, we don't do that here, stop doing that. I'm putting the rules in place. So 'cause it was a collective 'cause other children got to express their particular preference, it actually was far more effective and stayed enforced for much, much longer, uh, than it had done if it was just like, these are our rules, we just don't do that here. I think the hard thing for lots of people is to accept that superhero weapon play. And it took me a while is, and so much research out there so much now that was out there even five years ago, but it is a normal part of children's play department. Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. And what struck me once was somebody said if they were outside and playing Harry Potter and somebody had a wand and said, I've got a wand, I've turned you into a frog. We wouldn't bat an eye it if somebody says, I've got a gun and bang bang you dead. It's because of the imagery that we attach to that. But actually the intent of play of the child is exactly the same. The child is not really intending to kill somebody, nor the intent of to the frog. What they're doing is saying, I'm assuming a position of power, but why are one's okay and gun's not okay. And I get the symbolism of it. And we don't wanna say to children that it's great and guns are great know. But also if you embrace that kind of play, it gives you an opportunity to talk to children about the negative aspects of it as well as the positive. And you can lead that as an adult. So my view completely changed from practitioner into the latter part of my headship and into my consultancy work. Lots of work, uh, with children. Um, 'cause when you go to other countries and work with children in other countries, you'll find it's exactly the same. I an interesting report, uh, a couple years ago about, um, children who are, have witnessed war and that in their play, children were playing all sorts of very bizarre things that they had witnessed in their everyday life. Because what role play is, is you making sense of the world around you and the imaginary world that you live in. So some of the play for those children was really able and really bizarre, but it was important that they could do it because they need to be able to make sense of what it was that you'd seen. Yeah. Yeah. I really, I really like the, the information you were saying about um, putting the two bits of paper up. I think that's a really good idea. Yeah, I really like that. And getting more talking and as I said before, can't get children to talk enough. Um, No. And handed it back to them. Them, yeah. And they are. And as we know, we all know working early years and I think annoys me most about working early years. And when I was head of the elementary infant school in the early years unit, when my reception used to come in, the dinner ladies used to say, the ones who actually sit behind the hatch. Oh, the babies are in. The babies are in. And I was per saying, they are not babies. They are four mm-Hmm. They're not, They're not babysitters. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. 30 of them, they come out and tell me they're babies because that's, they're not capable of so much. And actually in terms of things like reasoned argument, uh, they are really good at that. When you just say, okay, what do you like? What do you don't like? So how can we make it so that everybody's happy? Mm-Hmm. And that element of compromise, you know, before too, we're not interested. We don't have an element of empathy. It's just like, well it's mine and I want it, so I'm gonna have it beyond two. Then you, you and you develop empathy. And the way you develop empathy is by trying to experience it all the time and talking about it. So the more empathetic reasoning you can do, the better. And then you could even turn your role play dilemma into one of the details tool bags. So you can have that exist in one of your, in your, in your dilemma bag and you could, uh, work it that way. Yeah, we've got a problem, we've got a problem. That's it. How are we gonna resolve that problem? So make a real life tales to look at experience. So yeah, it's, it's not, it doesn't, it's not dead simple. It doesn't happen overnight for some children. You've gotta work a bit harder, but it's that effect. Um, and giving them some command over what they do. Mm-Hmm. But a lot of that dynamic risk assessment, even when you talking about outdoor play, where we're setting at the moment, whose reception go out in the afternoon with no adult. So the door is open, the adult tends to be in most of the time 'cause there's only one 'cause the TA that works in reception goes off to do reading interventions in year three in the afternoon. They do. And so they weren't going out at all. And then they certainly decided that they 'cause the earliest foundation stage, uh, statutory guidance says can see and or hear your children at all times. They did a big risk assessment outside, talked to the children all the time, and now they have outdoor access with no adults. But they've got loads of strategies in place for what would happen if, and obviously it's been risk assessment safe. Yeah. They did all of that work around this whole dynamic risk assessment about, well when you play in the mud kitchen, what do we like about the mud kitchen? What could be dangerous about the mud kitchen? So how can we solve our play When you wanna go there, if nobody can see you, then you have to go in twos. And again, it was children that were coming up with solutions and it means that there's far more effective. Yeah. That's it. It's from them. Um, there's another question there Alistair. Um, Bernie's asking, is there an average age when boys catch up with girls in terms of being ready physically to write? And why doesn't the E-Y-F-S-P take this into account? There is no average and that's the problem. Mm-Hmm. We know that boys can be up to 18 months behind girls in development, their physical dexterity. Mm-Hmm. We know that some of the muscle development wise is different to girls because some of their muscles were originally intended for different tasks. So for example, their pelvic muscles are shorter. And so when boys sit with their legs crossed, they stretch their pelvic muscle, which can often mean that they've aches. So they often stick their legs out in a y shape to straighten their pelvic muscle or they kneel up on their knees and straighten up. So we're often telling boys to sit down 'cause they're fidgety, but often they fidgety aches their board with be of the chy and girls tend to have far greater dexterity, uh, in terms of their muscle development. Um, and then there's been some big discussion around male and female brain and that, you know, the not all girls have a female brain or boys have a male brain, but the majority of girls have female brain. Majority of boys have a male brain. The male female brain has got more elements to it like communication, uh, empathy language. Mm-Hmm. Whereas a male brain tends to be a bit more systematic, a bit more logic driven. And so girls, because of how their female brain is, are often more drawn towards the activities that Mm-Hmm. Appeal to their brain development. Whereas boys aren't because their brain is not developed in the same way. So there's lots of kind of subtle stuff going on, but there is not a classic age, uh, where they do and the profile about, you know, all boys and girls are expected to be at the certain level and you know, you'll know it as a reception teacher when you look at your, you, so some boys do get there and they get their brilliant medal and some girls don't get there. But it's, uh, the majority of children do not. Well the national average says the majority of children in your class will reach profile, uh, by the end of uh, foundation stage. But it's by no means a hundred percent of children, which is a whole other issue when you then get to transition because you're looking at children who haven't reached profile that are gonna be about a third of your class, your average Mm-Hmm. And they five weeks off where everything leaks out of every year anyway. And then they go into a national curriculum environment which is not based. And those children then just fall further and further and further behind. So it is mechanized. Um, and that's why it's really important, and I know the shame about it, the whole thing about early years is it's not a key stage, it's a stage of development. It's not a curriculum, it's a foundation stage. And so the fact that it's not recognized as such, and we've got these markers at the end, which teachers feel immensely pressured to get their children to, as opposed to say that my children are here, their development is not hierarchical, it is not linear. And therefore I can show you what I have done with this child and I can show the progress that they've made. They're never gonna make that in a month to Sundays. And that should be okay. Yeah. But unfortunately because of the way that we work and government targets and pressure on schools, that isn't really Okay. Yeah. And often it's, it's the things like reading, writing, maths that people can measure and actually before you get the language in place and the physical development that you've been talking about, you're not gonna get those things You so no, it, it's all done back to front. And then you get this panic on that happens usually after about Easter when A goes out the window and reception because you're looking at your children and thinking, I am never gonna get them to get those, uh, profile scores. So we just do intensive hot housing for term Yes. To get them where we need to be. And we know now some research about last year, which was talking about the fact that in that intense last half turn in reception, when you are feeding, feeding, feeding the children, undoubtedly they get to what, when you are presenting everything, saying look, they are at that point in their development, they undoubtedly are. And some of them stay there, but a lot of them, it's been almost like when you cram from the exam and you can remember it once you start then to take your foot off the pebble towards the end of term. Once they then get five or six weeks off, then they come back into year one, which is a strange environment anyway. Yeah. And a lot of them demonstrate they haven't got that knowledge. It's 'cause it's never stuck in the first place. It was only every bit of stick and plaster and it's come off. Yeah. So that's why sometimes when we pass our children through to year one and year one staff look at the data and then look at the child and say, well that doesn't match. Yeah. And you take that as a personal upfront, but often it's because the child actually hasn't been there really concrete with those skills. Mm-Hmm. And then need to rehearse them and you learn them again. Yeah. So it's a real shame that we can't, you know, it's a bigger fight to fight. We can't say, look, this is where this child is up to in their development. This is where you need to start. As opposed to we've gotta push 'em over there. Yeah. And then push 'em more further on. Mm-Hmm. Which is why so many children, especially boys, get massively turned off by school. Yeah. And then they spend the entire time in the sunshine room with some woman with novelty tabard and badges, doing interventions when actually just had a more appropriate curriculum. They wouldn't have had that issue. Yeah. It's true. Good. It's true. It's really true. Yeah. We, we know how to do it in early years, don't we? We know how to do it the right way. So yeah, we just need to get That message out there. That's it. We do, we do. So I think that's probably a good note, Alistair, to let you go off and have an evening or what's left of it. It's um, an hour. It's gone past so quickly and, um, just before I came on, my youngest son vomited all over the utility in floor. Did I imagine now to not have a nice gin and tonic in the garden, but to, it's Such, I think that was in, in protest of the, uh, on it because you're using your webinar. Exactly. That's what it was. So, no, but big thank you Alison. It's been really good to you on board and Yeah. Yeah. And um, everybody have a look on Alice's website. So do you want to shout out the, the web address? It's, Yeah, www toss, of course. ABC does DO s.com and I've also got a book might as well put shame as plug into that as well. Getting, getting ready to write and getting ready to write, which you can buy on Amazon. They're all good book sellers and have a lot of the stuff that we've just been talking about tonight and a million bits more just about that. Preparing to write the physical stuff, the handwriting stuff, all that kind of thing. Yeah. Brilliant. High level engagement, high level. The more, the more successful you'll be. That's it. Big. Thank you Alistair. Yep. Thanks.