WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. Tonight we've got the fantastic Alistair Bryce Cle back with us again. Yay. Um, and we're huge fans of Alistair. Um, when I was working in schools I used to lose lots of his books and we were busted to get you to come in for training, but we never managed it. Um, and now that I'm working on Sales Toolkit, um, I've had a chance to get into Alistair's Talks and to hear all of the fantastic messages he's putting across. Um, I love the fact that Alistair shares our ethos for play and creativity and developing language and he's got lots of fantastic book definitely worth checking out. Um, and in terms of Alistair's talks, it's worth going along just to hear the story about the school pig. So yeah. Um, but no, we're really excited to have you here tonight, Alistair. So I'm gonna hand over to you to talk and then I'm gonna take some questions at the end. Ab thank you very much Kate. Okay. Um, it is really lovely to be here and uh, to chat again on another Tales Toolkit webinar. And as Kate said, you know, um, I really promote what Kate does with Tales Toolkit, as you will know and promote on the blog because it is a fantastic, uh, resource. It sounds like such a simple idea and fundamentally it is such a simple idea, but actually impact is quite massive. So there are schools that I work with on a regular basis who are using tools, tales, toolkit, as lots of you will be. And the results they are getting, uh, are, are really, really good, uh, results, especially around language storytelling. But not just that for me. Also around things like wellbeing and levels of confidence, which are really important. So thrilled to be asked to come and talk, which is one of my favorite things to do. Um, just around early years in general and especially around elements of tale toolkit. So this time of the year everybody's gone back. Of course, if you're in Scotland, you've been back ages and you dunno what all the fuss is about with all these back to school messages, most of us have been back now for a couple of weeks. So you've got all your sleepless nights, you've got all the kind of nervous tummy and you know, especially if you're in reception or nurse, you might wanna be having that staggered start going on children just coming into your space. It was always my favorite and worst time of year when I was a teacher, when I was a head teacher. Um, 'cause the excitement of the New Year and you can feel the weather's changing, uh, strictly started bake off started. So we know it's almost Christmas and yet you've got these little vulnerable new starters who are coming often with their little vulnerable parents who sometimes are handing over their precious cargo for the very first time. And that's really hard. As just indicated before, uh, we started the webinar, my eldest son who's now 18 about to be 19, is off to university. So it's the, the first of our boys that's actually leaving home. And I feel far worse about that than I did when he was four and starting school, partly because he was starting school where I was a teacher. So I, he was very familiar with the space and I knew what he was coming to, but also because you think they're vulnerable and they're four and five, but actually when they get to be 18, 19 it's a really hard time when you're becoming an adult and you know, beginning to find your feet and you know, spend your own money and save and not spend your entire life living on big beans. So it feels like a really funny start of term but in a very different way. So a lot of the work that I'm doing this time of the year is looking at people who are creating environments for assessment. 'cause we're doing that kind of baseline where we up to lots of schools I work with will have a lot of children with English in additional language. And that's an added complication because you're then looking at trying to assess children who can't articulate what they know because they don't necessarily speak the language that is in the tongue of the school or in the tongue of the assessment that's been done. So we've got a hard job in early years to try and set our children in and also get a gauge on where they are in terms of their development. Obviously the most important thing for us this time of year is that sense of wellbeing. Sometimes I've got some emails over the summer from people saying, I'm just starting for the first time in early years or in N QT and I've got my first class. What sort of things do I need to be planning for the first week? And my kind of response to that is always, well nothing really, as long as your space is tidy and you've got some really nice stuff out for the children, the first couple of weeks should just be about them thinking that this is the best place in the world to be and that you are a really lovely person who they're gonna enjoy seeing on a daily basis. 'cause I remember when I started and planning to be nth degree in activity after activity after activity, which never got completed because actually what children are into is just being in that space with you. So beginning of the year for me in their years is all about that wellbeing bit. Some of you will be using those luen scales of wellbeing and involvement. I'm sure most of you'll have come across them if you haven't lun, L-E-U-V-E-N. The two scales. Looking at children's levels of wellbeing and their levels of involvement really useful to use at this time of the year. But also to use throughout the year to track children's development And also, which is hard especially if you're in reception class in the school. I talk a lot with staff at this time of year about trying to create an environment for assessment as opposed to assessing within your environment. And I see those are two very different things. So I will say children, even at this early stage in the settling process, who a lovely adult will come along and say, if I'd come with me special job into the cloak room, come on or wherever into the cupboard into the intervention room, get the laptop out and then you spend 15, 20 minutes with an adult away from your peers in this weird environment clicking on a laptop. And I always question whether that gets the best kind of outcomes for children. A, are we assessing too early? Uh, and I know that there are some settings I work with where they're encouraged to assess earlier on in the process because if you assess earlier in the settling process, children often don't give as accurate or as high a score as they would if you assess later on, which gives you better progress and value added. But I think if we can have a space where we know what we're gonna assess, 'cause we're looking at early as outcomes, development matters, whatever it is you're using and you are trying to create uh, pockets of that environment, uh, where you give opportunities for activities or experiences that will support your assessment, then you can hit loads of other markers around personal social interaction, getting to know children, all that kind of stuff whilst assessing at the same time. Um, I never used to start my assessments until I felt the children were settled. So they're coming in, they're confident within the space to an extent they've starting to make friends, they're starting to feel settled. And you know from studies of wellbeing that if you are not feeling settled then you are kind of ache. Brain is kicking in, it's a bit flight or fight. So you are not able to process information, you're not able to learn as well as you would do. And so therefore if we wait and do lots and lots of initial work around settling confidence, things like that, then when we come to do the assessment you get a much more accurate picture of where the children are. Plus you'll find, or I always did that if you get to know your children a little bit first it really helps with your judgements because you know they can do some things because you've seen it and you've experienced that. One thing I used on a project last year at this time of year was building on the mini me work, which I've done before. And again, most of you I think will have mini mes. The idea of these small photographs of your children full size that are laminated, you can then stick to blocks or put on little stands or bottles, whatever it may be. And we were working with a group of children for English wasn't additional language initially and they were really struggling to settle 'cause for them they've been dropped off at school. It's a very strange place with people who don't speak their language and the team made with the family little mini mes of the family of the child that was leaving at home. And again, there were lots of questions around the team about well surely that's gonna be more give the child greater anxiety because they're gonna come in, they're missing their parent and then you're gonna be showing them photographs of their parents or their carers or the significant others. But what we found was having a mini of their family that they were able to even just have put in this part of their play talk to, given the extent of their language, talk about, again, given the extent of their language, massively helped with the settling process. So that's certainly now does that for all children. As part of their home visit they say, can we get some photographs of the family And we are gonna create this little set of figures which your child will bring into school with them. Then they can use them for talking about the language development. And then later on of course in good tales toolkit, fashion for elements of storytelling and for children who you know, lots of you as well if you members of Facebook groups will have seen a lot of the posts that go around at this time of year that say, don't ask your children what they did over the summer because for some children they've had a magical summer, but for other children they maybe haven't and experienced things like trauma or they've just not done anything over the summer. Uh, that's out of the ordinary. And if they're wanting children to emote and express and imagine then sometimes saying, okay, what did you do this summer? Doesn't really help with that process. But when they're bringing in artifacts or things from home, like members of their family and you're asking 'em to talk about that, then they've definitely got something to talk about. We always used to do a thing with my reception class called, uh, in the days before Donald Trump it would now be called fake news but we just call it the news that never happened. I used to say to my children that were gonna talk about what we did at the weekend, but you need to talk about something that never really happened. And when you do that kind of fake news, you get a far higher level of language and creativity. 'cause they're not just saying, oh I had chicken nuggets for my tea and I went around and saw me auntie, you're suddenly getting spaceships and aliens and footballers and trips to Disney World. And therefore when we know when children are expressing imaginative thought, they use a higher level of language than they do when they are expressing their day-to-day mundane task when they tend to fall into kind of colloquial low level in inverted lazy language. So anytime you can get children to try and imagine, you are going to get a significantly higher level of language usage and also the creativity that can feed off each other. And of course when you work with some children, you just get a version of what the child next to 'em said or in a small group. But actually when you do lots and lots, they get the hang of it and you start to get this higher level language going on. So when we are talking to children, you know, lying is an interesting word to, to use within the context of what we do. And to say I am actively asking children to lie. But actually if we ask them to just be inventive and tell us about news that never really happened, uh, we are actually asking them to lie in the same way that we like them about the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas and Easter Bunny. Uh, but we are getting 'em to be far more inventive in their language. So for me this time of year, language development, really important, personal social development, really important. And those interactions between adults and children, children and children and also adults and adults, it's really important in early years. We talk a lot about play and we will talk a lot about investing in play at the beginning of the year and throughout for the rest of the year. But it's also important that it's not just play for children. That adults have an element of play to the work that they do 'cause happy adults make for happy children in a happy environment. So, um, while I'm not talking about an element of play, like let's stop everything and have a game around us, but just this idea that you wanna be a team, you are working together as a team, you're gonna share your highs, you're gonna share your lows, but you're gonna have that kind of interaction as time goes on. So beginning of the year, your work and on your team in the widest sense, the tribe that is your space, your church hall, your preschool group, your classroom. And within that you are beginning to make assessments of where children are at. Um, trying to get a sense of who they are, trying to kind of find elements of their individual needs or interests. So you can plot those into those individual learning journeys. And then the harder bits sometimes is trying to reflect what you find out in the environment that you create. So I would think about this time of year that you probably haven't got what we'd call continuous provision in place. You've got what we kind of call basic provision in place. So you probably don't know your children particularly well unless they've been passed to you by the year group below you. And so you've put out a variety of things that you know, children this age and stage tend to like and enjoy to play it with. And you are giving them lots of opportunities to allow you to observe and assess them. So it's often quite broad provision. And then as you begin to get a hang whoops of your children where they're up to, you start to uh, refine that provision and that provision then becomes linked to uh, all the things that you need to teach across all the areas of learning. But also you start to find that provision around the development of your children. And for me, as you'll know if you've had any of my stuff or come any of my training, I talk a lot about skill development in the early years environment. So we want children to be highly engaged 'cause high level engagement will link directly to high level attainment, but we also want children to be challenged by their play. Now sometimes that challenge will happen spontaneously, but often if we over theme our play spaces, we can take away that element of challenge. 'cause if you only ever give them the farm to play with, then it can only ever be the farm for most children. And if you haven't got the language of farm or an understanding of what a farm is or what farm play is, then you're very restricted by those resources. Whereas if you give them more open-ended resources, you're far more likely to get them to interpret those in a way that's linked to their level of imagination or their interest. So when we talk in the characteristics of effective learning about children, being able to play and explore within an environment, explore doesn't just mean putting on a backpack and trekking out into the woods to do forest schools. It's exploring in the sense of has your environment got some open-ended resources that allow children to interpret those in their own way? Or is your space very themed around your topic so that when I leave the carpet I can only go to activities that are all linked to whatever it may be ourselves, funny bones, mini beasts, journeys, whatever. So we want this kind of idea of playing and exploring, but we also wanna think about the fact of when I am not working with children or they are not with me in a group session or ever, it may be what, how do I perceive their attainment outside of an adult? So when my children go to the sand tray, when my children go to the malleable materials area, when they go to the mark making table, whatever may it be, what is my thought in terms of planning around their attainment? How does my provision support them in moving forward in their learning? And if we keep our provision very low level emergent exploratory provision, then sometimes children can get a little bit stuck in a rut of play where they find something that they enjoy doing so that they know they're very good at. So they just keep returning to that again and again and again, which is great, consolidates that good for their sense of wellbeing, but it doesn't help them to shift forward. And I think sometimes as adults, if we are facilitating group work, which a lot of us do, then you are working with this group of six children, everybody else is busy. What we need to get really good at is looking at what they're doing and asking, you know, what are you busy doing? Yes you're busy, but are you busy doing something that's consolidating your learning and taking you forward? Or are you busy doing something where you are revisiting a skill or a process that you have got well embedded in your arsenal of things that you can do and you're going back there because A, the resources invite you back there and B, because you find that easy. So when you start to think about skill development within continuous provision and you start to look at your sand tray for example and say, well normally I would have out if it's dry sand, I might have some funnels and I might have some jugs and I might have a sand wheel and I might have some uh, buckets and I might have some trows. Then you start to think, well, okay, if I look at the individual skills, the children can develop through that play. And I think well with the bucket and the jugs, they could well be pouring and pouring is a skill. So if I think about pouring and how a simple pouring starts with a large vessel with a handle and a spout that's easy to fill and easy to hold and easy to tip and easy to pour, then if I only give children that simple vessel, that's all my offer is for pouring. So it's a jug. Then whenever they come to the sand to pour, they're always gonna be pouring at that level where then you think, well okay, if that's simple pouring, what would make that jug or the, or the pouring action more complex, what would I need to do to this container? How could it change? What could I add? What could I take away? How could the shape change? How could the size change? What might that look like? How would I make that a little more challenging? And it's not that you ever get rid of the emergent resources, it's not like you ban the jugs or you ban the buckets once they get past preschool. It's about saying, in my provision for sand play or water play, we're talking about pouring, I'm gonna give pouring resources and I'm gonna give some emergent pouring resources because children, once they get better at pouring, begin to interpret emergent resources in a more complex way. But the majority of my resources are going to be linked to consolidating and taking children forward. So what I do a lot of work on is looking at a thing that I call common play behaviors where once the children are in and assessed and you're beginning to get an idea of where their strengths are and where their areas for development are, and you're beginning to kind of sort that provision out, you look at each area in turn and kind of ask the question outside of anything else I might add to this area or enhance this area with, if I am not here and children come to sand, what are the things that they commonly would do in sand? If children come to water play, what are the things they commonly do? Water on the malleable materials table. If I'm not there and there's just a lump of door and the resources that are out, what do children commonly do? Well, do they pinch, do they roll, do they coil? You know, what, what is it that they do? And then you look at each of those as a skill and say, okay, if we're looking at rolling and children will roll door, are we looking at spherical rolling? Are we looking at cylinder rolling or are we looking at flat rolling? Or are we looking at all three of those things? And if it's spherical rolling between your palms, what can I give children to support that development? Where would that start? Where did that go? If we're looking at flat rolling, where you tend to squash your door using an object or your palm to start off with probably the most emergent thing, let's look at this object. You're gonna flatten that door with what makes it easy, what makes it harder? Are we adding an element of pattern? Oh, so we go, so we go, so we go. And so you start to look at the common play behaviors of children. Not all of the behaviors are the exclusive behaviors of children, but common play behaviors. And each of those you then look at as a skill. And then you look at your resources that are available and think, okay, if I only ever put out a big wide funnel and a big jug with a big handle, as soon as a child walks into this space, my resources are inviting a particular type of play. If I put out other resources that are more challenging to support those emergent resources, then I am maximizing the potential for children to engage with a resource that's going to challenge that skill and take it forward. And I'm also, if I've got that level of understanding as an adult, really helps me if I intervene in play to be able to support a child in developing that skill. Of course, that's always the really difficult thing in the job that we do in early years is that sometimes we develop this early years Tourettes and we end up intervening in play when actually what we should be doing is just standing, watching or observing or sometimes enhancing with other resources to support what the child's actually doing. And sometimes intervening and questioning and teaching. But I think often, especially if you've been observed by somebody like me, you find you can't help yourself, but you're wandering around saying, oh that's lovely. Oh that's lovely. Or the worst one we do and we're all guilty of it, is the how many question. If in doubt, ask how many. So, oh that's lovely. How many bricks are in your tower? Ooh, that's lovely. How many pompoms are on your picture? And literally children get very sensitive to how many questions very early on or stop showing you things 'cause oh, please just don't ask me how many. Um, so sometimes how many question is appropriate, not very often. Um, but sometimes it's even more appropriate just to observe. And for me as well, observing your space is as important as observing your children because often we're very fixated with getting our children observed across all of the areas. And sometimes when you stand back and you look at the space that you've created and you take time to watch children in the space and what you're really watching is yes, how the children are interacting with each other, but also how they're utilizing the space. That's when you can sometimes make significant changes to your space because you realize that children aren't using it in the way that you thought they might, or they're actually using it in a much better way than you thought they would, or their interest in that area is huge. So maybe you need to diversify and extend that area or double it up or replicate it somewhere else. And actually in that area over there, nobody ever goes there. So in that respect, your space is very precious. So maybe you don't wanna keep that area as it is if nobody's using it. You wanna take those resources, put them into other spaces and use that area for something else. The thing that really in the settings I work with, which is very challenging but does significantly alter their practice, is the idea of thinking of your space as a continuum of skills. And that you are encouraging sometimes through direct teaching, sometimes often just through play children to develop a range of skills in a range of areas. And that idea that the resources you put on the shelf gives an invite to a child to come and play. So if you just put pirates on your small world shelf, you're inviting children to come and play pirates, very few will say, ah, it is a pirate ship, but I'm gonna reinterpret this pirate ship as a McDonald's restaurant. They kind of think, oh, as a pirate I'm gonna play pirates. Ooh, there's a farmer, I'm gonna play a farm. Ooh, here's a jug I'm gonna pour. So it's being aware that resources are lovely, but also that we want them to impact on children's development. And I think at the moment, again, for all of us, and it's not just about teaching, it's, I think it's pervades all aspects of our life. We are in teaching in the early years in all forms that I look at becoming more and more of kind of a Pinterest and Instagram pressured, uh, culture where, I mean, even on the Instagram accounts that I follow, a lot of them, you see beautiful examples of immaculate classrooms where everything is hessian backed and everything comes in a bowl which has fallen off and turned by the hands of a master craftsman. And it's all looks fabulous. But actually what we don't share a lot of the time is, and this sort of looked like 10 minutes later and the children got their hands on it. And a lot of the conversations I have are around that is gorgeous, but why are we doing it? So you've set up that provocation there, you've set up that small world space, you've set up that water play, it looks great. But in terms of why, where is that impetus come from? What is it about these children that you know or have found out that made you think that this is the thing that's gonna feed into their next steps or take them forward in their learning? So I think we have to just be aware that Instagram and Pinterest, although brilliant for inspiration, uh, and ideas is not real life. And actually any environment I ever worked in that looked like a page from Pinterest would send alarm bells ringing for me. You have to have a bit of active mess in any early year space. You want at least some now environmentally friendly glitter ingrained in doormat, excuse me, you want at least a painting, hand print somewhere in the toilets. And always you want that large brown stain on the carpet that nobody ever quite knows how it got there. But every setting's got one that shows that children have been engaging in real stuff as part of their learning. 'cause I don't really think you can teach children skills without making a bit of mess. And also the kind of idea that you've got to learn to fail to be able to succeed. And we want our children to be resilient. We want 'em to show perseverance. And you don't develop those skills of resilience if you get it right every time. Nor do you get those skills of resilience if an adult comes along and says, okay, it's um, autum time and Halloween, so we're all gonna make a spider out of an egg box with googly eyes and pipe cleaners. This is what it's, we're gonna make it out of. This is how you're gonna make it and here's one I made earlier. So it needs to look like this by the end. Again, you don't get that level of creativity, you don't get that kind of idea of resilience. We want, again, going back to the, you know, effective learning. We want creative and critical thinkers and you don't get creative and critical thinkers in life if somebody keeps telling you this is what you're gonna do and this is what, how, what the outcome's gonna be or somebody keeps telling you the answer. Where you become a creative and critical thinker is where you have to interpret. And you can only interpret if you've got a bank of experiences and resources to pull on to help you to make those interpretations. And you only get that bank of resources if you've had a breadth of experience over a range of skills and attributes and resources that allow you to build up that bank. So therefore we go back to this environment that, you know, is open-ended slightly ambiguous, where children can play and explore and that we are planning to take them forward in their skills, not just to take part in an activity. And also when you are trying to work with children who might have English as an additional language, who might not be able to have the language of pirate ship or farm, when you're given something that's a little bit more open-ended for those children to play with it, they can interpret even if you don't understand the language they're using, you can see levels of involvement and levels of engagement. And when you start to see high levels of involvement engagement, that's telling you that that child is feeling more settled and comfortable within your space. So when you're not seeing those higher levels of engagement and involvement, it's kind of an indicator that they're still not settled enough to be able to forget about their anxiety and invest themselves in what's going on around them. So again, some things for children to be able to recognize, things that are linked to their interest, things that are linked to the thing that you are talking about can be great additions to environment, but an idea of having a space that's more open-ended and more linked to scale, really good for personal social development, language development, but also just that cognitive creative development. And all of that pulls us always nicely back to the concept of play being the key that when, you know, it's, again, the more I work with school-based settings, especially, uh, receptions. And, and for me the, the big, you know, champion thing that I do is to try and take play into year one and beyond. And what you get constantly as an argument against that is there is no time to play because we're trying to fit everything else in. Somebody else has asked me to look at their timetable this week before they went back, uh, in September and uh, they had allocated 20 minutes for continuous provision in the morning and 20 minutes for continuous provision in the afternoon. And their question was, do you think that's enough? And of course the answer is, well no, it's not enough. In 20 minutes you, you've hardly got time to get anything out, nevermind invest in kind of that prolonged deep level play. So we know play is good for a million different things for, you know, helping children to learn a language for switching their brains on, for uh, forming new synapses for ability to make links, to apply what they know to new situations, to develop opportunities for mark making to do real maths, et cetera, et So there are a million reasons why we would want to play because they support what all of the things we're gonna then move on to in our later school career. But to underpin that effective play, you need a really effective environment that contains the resources that are gonna allow children to explore and consolidate and be challenged by all of those concepts. So it's a lovely kind of heady mix between adult instruction, the creation of an environment that is open-ended and skill linked with various enhancements that adults provide linked to children's interests or the things that you're talking about. And then time for children to be able to explore that environment whilst being supported by adults. You sometimes support just by observing 'cause by observing you, I can make a judgment about where I could support you in moving to next, which means that I can enhance the space or have an interaction with you that will help you on that journey. So time to play is really important. Time to watch is really important and I know, and it's easy for me to say, especially in the laptop, that if you invest in that in the early stages of child development, then that will pay you great dividends. Far more than the nurse I was working with the other day who have started to do a phonics program now with some of the children who are literally just through the door and bums on the carpet. And the idea being that if you start it now, then that gives them lots and lots and lots of time to learn it. I think again, a phrase that I overuse far too much is this idea of a developmentally appropriate curriculum and a developmentally appropriate environment. I think when you look in children who are 3, 4, 5, 6 years old and looking at how their brains develop, regardless of how articulate they are, you've gotta look at their levels of maturity. You've gotta look at their levels of interest and try and create a space that supports that. Because when you hit that nail on the head and you really get the engagement from those children, they get a passion for learning. They're massively on board with what you are talking about. And then there's other elements of more formal learning come in, they're far more ready to take those on board because it's developmentally appropriate. But I also appreciate there is a huge amount of pressure from all sorts of places. Parents, other members of staff, uh, parallel teachers, senior leadership school, next door league, table SATs, all sorts of things that filters down eventually. And you feel a huge pressure that your children have to start doing X, Y and z uh, to enable them to get to where they need to be. I would still argue that effective play that really does support children's learning and development is that best foundation for children. And that then moving forward you will see even stronger outcomes, uh, than you would've done if you start the inverter formal process earlier. But I know it's easy for me to sit here and preach in my, uh, dining room, not so simple. If you are the person who's actually gonna do that within the space. Um, the, I recently had the great, uh, uh, honor, I was gonna say this was, it wasn't honor this year. Some of you will have seen, um, last year, this time of year, there was a program on channel four called Old People's Home for four year Olds where they put, uh, ten four year olds and 10 old people together for six weeks. And they looked at the outcomes on the older people of being in that environment. So this year, channel four commissioned a second series, it's about to uh, um, end of this month, beginning of next month. And they asked me to come along and work with them as the early years expert, uh, on the program expert in massive inverted, um, looking at the impact of the children on the interactions with the adults. And we did it for double the time. So it was a 12 week experiment. Um, I observed the children, uh, the interactions with the adults. I watched the films. We had parent diaries going on, we did various forms of assessment. Imperial College London came and did some facial uh, recognition assessments on, on the children facial movement assessments. And we were looking at whether there was a significant impact on the children or just a significant impact on the adults. So you won't be surprised to learn as like series one, the impact on the adults is quite phenomenal and makes for great watching to see how these adults who literally were in the twilight of their life start to reverse a lot of the physical cognitive issues that they having. But what we found, which was really fascinating, was that the impact on the children was equally as impressive just in a different way. So what our older adults were doing was relearning some of those early skills and what our children were doing through their interactions with the adults was acquiring the skills sometimes for the first time, sometimes just building on skills that they already had. But the thing that made the biggest difference because apart from the fact the older adults haven't got a job, they haven't got another child to pick up from school, they're not making the tea, they haven't lost a pump bag, obviously they've got their issues within their lives, but they've got a lot of time to spend. And so the children with the adults from first in the morning till the end of the nursery day even ate their lunch with the adults. And so what they got was long periods of time where adults literally devoted their listening, their interactions, their conversation, so their sustained shared thinking and their sustained shared talk to these children. And what we saw was in a 12 week period, these children made significantly greater progress in things like imagination, language development, confidence, wellbeing, involvement, empathy than an average group of four year olds would've made if they were just at home and then perhaps going to school because they were getting to interact with their peers. But they were also getting this really focused concentrated time. And walking away from the experiment, I was often asked, you know, once, the one thing is somebody who works a lot with early years that you will take away from this. And I think the thing that really impacted on me was this, the aspect of time, the fact that children were given time to play, time to talk, but also time to be talked to and time to listen. And that and the bonds that obviously made with the people that they were with on a daily basis had a huge impact on their learning and their ability to learn. And when I know it's very difficult when you've got 10 old people and 10 children when now you're suddenly thinking, well I've got 30 children and there's two of us, I've got 52 children and there were three of us. Um, but I reflected on how much time I built in to my work as a consultant and also thinking back to when I was a classroom teacher for that kind of sustained shared thought and sustained shared talk. And when I looked on it, it was actually very little and a lot of the time that we talked it was about adults, adults talking or children talking collectively in a large group where one talks and 29 listen. And so I think I would, well I do think differently about that and I've reflected a lot on how you could bring, not necessarily bring old people in, but how you can take that element of um, time and prolonged periods of interaction between individuals or groups because the outcomes that we saw from those prolonged interactions were great. Also, I would say, well you've got old people, more and more old people every year who are an untapped resource and we have hundreds and thousands of four year olds who are an untapped resource. If we can bring them together in any way, shape or form, it's gotta be a benefit. What we found again, which was interesting, was when I was ahead I would send my reception down at Harvest and Christmas and Easter to sing our assembly songs and give out a basket of, you know, just slightly past their best vegetables and a tin of Campbell soup to the old people. And the the old people loved it and the children used to like to go and that's lovely in terms of a brief interaction. But where we saw a real difference is where you get that consistent regular interaction. The more regular the better. But even once a week is better than kind of three times a year and once a day is even better than that. So if you can facilitate something like that within your setting, I would absolutely say do it. If I had a setting, I'd be doing it tomorrow. But I think also within the environment you are creating this idea of creating time to think and creating time to talk as a group or as individuals will have significant impact on how your children feel about the space, how well you know them and they know each other and how you can take 'em forward in their learn. I've got a few questions here that have come up kind of like you've been talking. One of them is, is planning based on skills. Like when you do this, how do you link to interest and how do you plan ahead making that link to the curriculums? There's a few questions in that one There. So I would say for me, you've got your development matters early as outcomes as your kind of broad curriculum. So you know, you're heading towards those early learning goals. Mm-Hmm. And so I think that topic for me tends to sit with the adults. So I'm not the topic police. I know I do work with some settings that don't have any topic at all. It's purely, um, children's interests and seasons. So this time of the year they would be looking at autumn and anything that walked through the door. So there wouldn't be same which I would've done right in the autumn, it's ourselves followed by celebrations 'cause that also comes as Halloween and then Christmas and then you know, blah blah blah and then we go into blah blah. So they would just not do that. But if you are gonna have a topic like ourselves, what again in my early teaching days, we'd have planned it all out. It would be a different body part a week. You know, one week would be elbows and ankles and one week would be we'd sing head, shoulders, knees and toes, then we'd read funny bones, then we'd all stick art straws onto black sugar paper and sit with a TA for a week doing that. And that would make a every funny bones display and it becomes very, very narrow. So what I would say is that you look at your children's needs that are driven by assessment. So you end up looking across all of the areas of learning and thinking where your children are strong or where they need to develop. And you use that as a basic map for your learning space. Yep. And when you've created areas of provision, you start to look at the, the idea of common play behaviors and skill development, which is not exclusive, it's just a, a support within that space. And then once you've got a space where, you know, in our sand area for example, we've looked at common play behaviors, we've tried to resource to support children's development in that, then often settings will then enhance and you can't say enhance on a weekly basis 'cause some enhancements last a day and some enhancements last forever. Some enhancements become part of your provision where you tend to enhance around children's interests. You tend to enhance around topical theme that you're talking about. People enhance around basic skills or other areas of learning. So they might put something in that's linked to grouping or counting or they might put something in that's linked to personal social. Sometimes people enhance around a specific skill. So they might say, well I really wanna look at the skill of pouring, joining, stretching, rolling, whatever it may be. And sometimes people will enhance around an element of challenge. So I am looking at children's ability to count and group. So in my sand I'm gonna add in lots and lots of resources that are, oh, they might make patterns with them, they might play armies with them. They also might be able to sabotage the word that we've all got to use now or they might be able to count on groups. So they're the kind of five main areas that people tend to enhance around. So I would look at my development matters. I would think, here are my children, this is what is pertinent to what's going on at the moment. So put elements of that down, look at my environment, try and make it more skills based and activity focused. And then I would enhance link to that kind of five areas and I would just evaluate as I go. So it makes quite an organic planning process, but you're always going back to your early years outcomes and development matters is your overarching scheme as it were, or your long-term plan? Yeah, Yeah. When I was in school we used to do, um, we used to plan a lot like this, so it used to be quite open and we used to have like a, a big start to something where you'd get in lots of things that would stimulate the children thinking about certain things. Yeah. And then you would just see where it flowed. For example, we did um, a term where we started off talking about feelings and we did lots of arts, different types of music and it ended up being a pajama party. Yeah. Because it turns out the things that made the children most happy was buying pajamas from Mazda. So this was like, That's the joy of it. And I think for me, if I go into a space that has got an element of random about it, so we started here but we ended up over there. That's when that is great for me to see that because it shows you going children's interest. I did a talk the other day, um, called Spider in the sink, massive spider in the sink. It was about a setting I was working with that were doing a topic and they found a massive house spider in the sink and that sent the children mad. They were just, they couldn't believe it. And then all this interesting spiders and suddenly we had started with something like ourselves and ended up looking at tropical spiders and jungles and all sorts. And not all children were mad about spiders. Yeah. But um, it was just lovely to see it go with the children's interest as opposed to say, well there's a spider in the sink, but actually we're talking about autumn at the moment. So if we could just put the spider outside and get back to conquers, then life would be good. Yeah. So I think also in early years we are given permission by the, the curriculum that we've got to be able, you know, I talk about playful adults and playful learning. Part of that is about saying, do you know what? If that's where it takes you, let's run with it. See what, see what happens for us, It's way more for us because I know working with adults like that where they knew that they could run with ideas and go with stuff and they have a lot more freedom, that's when you start to get excited as an adult. I think You do. You've gotta think as long as you're covering development matters, which is our current kind of curriculum, what's the worst thing that can happen? All good. It's Um, yeah. Um, right. So I've got another question here. Um, how do you think we should make observations? So what's your kind of top observations? Well, What I don't think we should be doing, which I do come across lots of people doing where they say I've gotta observe every child in every area, every half term and I've gotta have three points. And that becomes ridiculous. I think what we've gotta ask ourselves is why do we have observations in the first place? Mm-Hmm. There are so many different sorts of observations in the classroom. Observation. There are contextual observations where you're trying to give a contextual picture of a child from start to finish. Um, they are individual observations that are linked to next steps for children. There are observations within areas of learning. There are personal social interaction observations. So there are millions and I think you should be observing for a purpose. So an observation should tell you something about a child and where you are to move to next. There is a lovely book called Learning Stories and one of the authors is a lady called Wendy Lee who I spoke with when I was working out in Australia. She's from New Zealand. And she talks about how the, their culture of creating a contextual learning story. Now what she does is write, writes letters to children that she works with. So say I had a group of children, I've got a key group and in my key group I have many 7, 8, 9 children. Over the course of a half term I would write a letter to each of those children. And, and it was just a really lovely, I mean she made lots of examples out, but the idea that would, rather than saying today Harry was in the playdo, he used a pencil grip using his thumb and forefinger and managed. It's not that. It's saying, dear Harry, we've had such a good time this week. I particularly enjoyed working with you in the construction. You told me that when you grew up you want to be a superhero. And I said, and what you got was loads of elements of documentation of actual learning threaded through a really personal contextual letter from an adult to a child, which I wish I had them or my children had them 'cause I have them now would just be glorious. So they got about six of those a year and they were part of the learning journey. So sometimes he had some actual how he pinched the door and also mixed into that was this, this is my picture of Harry things that he said, things that you did, interactions that we had. And also what you've got was a really warm feeling from the adult about how much I enjoy spending time with you. Um, so there are loads of books out there about observation assessment for early observation assessment. Um, Kathy Brody has done a fairly recent past couple of years book, which is really good and worth having a look at, which just explains it in very simple terms. Give lots and lots of examples. Observation should be for a reason. And if you are mindlessly observing children just for the sake of ticking a box in the back of a grade, then you're not doing the right thing. Yeah. Um, when I was working as nearly as coordinator, I said to my staff, if you make an observation, you have to do something with it. Yeah. Yeah. It's stopped a lot of the random useless ones. You get loads of post-it notes and plastic wallets. Yeah. And you see the plastic wallet getting fatter and fatter and fatter. If it's sitting in the plastic wallet, then it's not doing anything. Not doing Anything. And you get lots of pictures of children on bikes. Yes. Like what is that? The other thing is you end up with like, you know, if you're using tapestry or too simple and you've got your iPad because of the like observation observation, people just either see the whole world through an iPad screen or you get picture crazy. Yeah. So like, and you get a million pictures of children doing mundane tasks. And again, it's about revisiting that and saying, okay, why did I take that picture? What does it tell me? If it tells me nothing, then I need to delete it. If it tells me something, then I need to act on it. Yeah. And so yeah, it's, it again, I it's external pressure that a lot of people are under, but actually you've always gotta come back to you. If it doesn't tell you something, then don't do it. Tell You. One of the other things I liked that you were saying as well, Alistair was about, um, about lying. Yes. Because you were saying the stuff about lying and it's quite interesting 'cause we've been working with Goldsmiths and the lady that's done the study on tell's toolkit, she's looking to do a study on lying in children. Yeah. And she was saying, uh, the, at the beginning, like, children can't distinguish what a lie is. So if it is something that's not true, so she'll say to her child something like, um, it's bedtime. And they'll be like, no, that's a lie. So if it's something they don't like the sound of, it's, it's a lie and they find it really hard to distinguish. But My eldest son, when he was about four, was an accomplished liar. Yes. Really? And quite complex in his lying. And I remember once discussing that with an educational psychologist who came to school and just said, I have a real issue with my eldest at the moment, these lies, but these lies are quite complex. And she said, oh, it's a massive sign of a, it's a, it's a bright child. You know, the fact that you'll be able to create a lie and also deliver a lie and think about the consequences of that lying, try and mask those consequences. That's showing me all skill. I was like, yeah, that doesn't help me at home when I'm saying like, when he write his name in fell tip on the, our whole wall massive in fell tip. His brother was two. And I said to him, who has done that? Not me. So it's your name in Black Fell tip and your brother was two, but it wasn't you. No, no. It wasn't Me. It's this story practitioners about saying, you know, the fake news idea. Yeah. They say we just, we're really, really uncomfortable with asking children to tell lies. 'cause we go through our whole life saying it's not a good thing to lie. Yeah. But actually in terms of storytelling, It's great. It's great. And the and the language level you get is so much more complex when you are telling an untruth than when you're telling the truth. Yeah. So, and then you always come back with the classic, well what about Father Christmas in the Tooth Fairy? But it's about that the children learning the difference between a story and a lie and they are maybe slightly different. Yeah. And they start to pick that up because I remember, um, we were teaching reception, we had a little girl and every time we'd do things where we'd get dressed up or we'd do stuff, she'd be like, no, I know that's you Miss, I know it's you. And she was very kind of like literal, wouldn't kind of go down that route of telling stories in that way. And towards the end of the year we did a whole big thing about giants. And this one day she managed to get into the key stage one yard. And she stood on the other side and she shouted through and she said, um, she said, miss Kate, she said, A giant came and he put me over the fence and was like, yes, we've got a lion. Yes. It, it's happening. Tell stories. Even getting a child to lie, like To getting your children to lie. So yeah, it's a good skill. It's no, it really is. And it's just that whole, you know, element of creativity that comes from that space. Yeah. But that idea that you are born with the potential for an imagination, but you're not born with an imagination. And the fact that your imagination has to be fed. So the more you feed it, the fatter it gets, the fat it gets, the healthier it is. And so for a lot of us and the children that we work with, they're not being fed in the same way that we necessarily were through story and experience and language. And that's sustained shared torque and sustained shared thinking. So there's a bigger on, I think on us these days as practitioners to feed that imagination. And it's sometimes it's really hard and when you've got a lot of children with English additional language so they don't understand what on earth you're talking about. Again, difficult to be able to do that but essential. So I don't think our job is getting any easier. If anything it's slightly changes. The early years job gets harder. Fascinating. Rewarding knackering. Yes. But harder. Yeah. Um, in terms of kind of just any ideas that you've got for people that are struggling that they want to do all the creativity and the skills-based learning and like lots of play-based learning, if they're putting their heads with a management that's a lot more formal and wants them to have like a set time table that doesn't maybe allow to do those kind of things, what's your advice For that? It's a really, it is a really tough one. I think there is more and more evidence out there around how play-based learning cognitively has a really positive impact on children. There's also a really fine line between play-based learning and free play. And I think that the two things are not mutually exclusive, but no, are they the same? So in an environment where you just open the door every day and send to the children right in, you come get what you like out, I play away all day, I'll get the kettle on. My job here is done. That's not the same as play-based learning. And I think lots of senior leaders I work with who are resistant to play are frightened that that's what that's gonna become. Yeah. So I think if you are going to investigate it more, there are things, I mean not just me, there are blogs like mine, books like mine that are out there with loads of information on them. You'll see if you look at my blog, I work with lots of schools and on my blog, Instagram, Facebook, I always name check places I've been 'cause they're not my ideas, they're their ideas that I'm just sharing. And 99% of those settings, um, are more than happy for other settings to get in touch. So we with setting a lot in Olford and uh, they've done some brilliant work in turning a team around and I was working with another school and the head was really quite reticent. And I said, why don't you just give Pat from Alford a ring? She was where you are four years ago. Just let her talk you through her journey and spoke to her and she basically said, this is where we were, this is where we are now. This is what we did. And that con one conversation was enough for that, that head to say, okay, I get what you're talking about now as long as these measures are in place, off you go. And that score is really flourishing. So sometimes it's about finding somebody who can 'cause with me, I'm an early years consultant so they don't, they know I've got an early years agenda. Early years teachers can be annoying 'cause they're fighting the fight for play when everybody else is fighting the fight for attainment and they don't see that the two things come together. Mm-Hmm. So finding somebody who comes from a similar standpoint but can talk about a journey that was successful in the end can be a really useful thing. Yeah. Um, Ron has just asked, have you got any names of research that supports play beta learning Nos? Um, one really good site to have a look at. Yes. Um, if you are on Twitter or not on on uh, the internet, have a look at Upstart Scotland. Obviously it's Scotland, but Upstart Scotland are campaigning for the start date for children to be moved to seven years old. But also what they've got on their site is a huge research bank that's all linked to current research. A lot done by Aberdeen University into developmentally appropriate curriculum. The impact of play-based learning. And there is loads there to get your teeth sunk into. Also a lot of their published papers then have references at the bottom, which they will. So what I've done has got lost in a paper and then gone through the references and then got completely lost in just the references from one paper. So there is loads and if you get stuck or you can't find it or there's something specific you are looking at, then if you email me and you can just do that through my website, the contact me button comes direct me. I will be able to point you in the right direction of something I've seen or read or somewhere to look. So there is lots, but I think if anything, if you're gonna go anywhere with an argument, you just have to be prepared. Yeah. With a bit of research. And then last question, um, a good, and you can give a shout out to your book here, Alistair, A good skill-based book to read and support play-based learning. Okay. So for me, I wrote this, I got two skill-based books. See if I was a bit more organized, a bit more ruthless, I'd have them all here to hold up and say his book I wrote earlier. Um, I wrote a book called, uh, continuous Provision in the early Years and that looks at using observation and assessment to create an environment and that begins to dip into skill-based provision. And then there's an accompanying book called Continuous Provision the Skills, which is purple. And that's, Yeah, Claire just given a shout out to that one. So yay. That delves a little more into how you do the skills on my blog while we're shouting out on abc.com, the blog bit. Mm-Hmm. If you search common play behaviors, if you search skill-based learning, you'll get a number of blog costs Yeah. That have examples of planning formats, all sorts of stuff, but also links to other bits and pieces. And again, if you're still stuck or you want any more information, please by all means drop me an email if I can, I'll help you out. Mm-Hmm. Lovely. Fantastic. Thank you Alistair. Oh You are welcome. Like Getting around the right time now. So it's just gone past nine o'clock, so we'll let you go and have an evening. How did that happen? This Is my evening. This is a highlight. I live with three teenage boys. This is the highlight of my evening. Apart from, this is my lovely wife isn't it? Yeah. If you wanna keep the door shut and pretend you're still on the webinar. Yeah, I should thought about that. I could've had a bottle of wine over there. I could've just talking to myself. It's true. Really, really big. Thank you Alistair. And thanks everybody for tuning in. It's been good to have chat. Everyone's coming along, So Yeah. And we'll chat soon. Alright. Thanks everybody. Bye.