How adults can support children’s development as learners



How adults can support children’s development as learners

Key messages for fostering creating and thinking critically

Use the language of thinking and learning:

Think, know, remember, forget, idea, makes sense, plan, learn, find out, confused, figure out, trying to do.

Model being a thinker, showing that you don’t always know, are curious and sometimes puzzled, and can think and find out.

Encourage divergent thinking: What else is possible?

Value questions, and many possible responses, without rushing toward answers too quickly.

Support children’s interest over time, remind them of previous approaches and encourage them to make connections between their experiences.

Aim for a balance of structure and freedom, guiding but not controlling children’s learning.

In planning activities, ask yourself: Whose thinking is represented here? How will children find their own ways to represent and develop their own ideas?

Build in opportunities for children to play with materials before using them in planned tasks.

Model the creative process, showing your thinking about some of the many possible ways forward.

Give reasons rather than directive ‘rules’ for any limits on children’s activity.

Establish the enabling conditions for play: space, time, flexible resources, choice, control, supportive relationships.

Provide appropriate levels of stimulation within recognisable and predictable routines.

Be a sensitive conversational partner and co-thinker.

Plan linked experiences that follow what children are really thinking about.

Show and talk about strategies – how to do things – including problem-solving, thinking and learning. Use mind-maps to represent thinking together.

Give feedback and help children to review

Encourage children to learn together and from each other.

Develop a learning community which focuses on how and not just what we are learning.

How adults can support children’s development as learners

Key messages for fostering playing and exploring

Provide an environment with:

• Stimulating resources which are accessible. Open-ended and can be used and combined in a variety of ways and are relevant to children’s interests

• Flexible spaces indoors and outdoors to explore build and move.

• Limits to noise.

• Order and visual calm to aid concentration

• Resources which the child can move, change and affect –

• Challenges appropriate to the development of the children.

Ensure children have uninterrupted time to play and explore

Model and encourage open-ended exploratory play

Watch, consider the child’s intentions, and decide whether and when to support the child to manage what they are trying to do.

Give children opportunities to be independent in play, becoming involved only for specific reasons – to support, stimulate or extend when beneficial and for as long as needed to fulfil the purpose.

Join in play sensitively, fitting in with the children’s existing play themes.

Act as ‘play-tutor’ for children with little experience of imaginative play, modelling the next stage of developing dramatic, play.

Model self-talk, describing your actions in play.

Encourage children to try new activities and to assess risks for themselves, giving positive messages with words and body language.

Focus on processes and not outcomes – not the end quality of what was produced, but the challenges faced, the effort, thought and learning involved, and the enjoyment.

Encourage a growth mindset presenting failures as opportunities to learn and talk about how we get better at things through effort and practice.

How adults can support children’s development as learners

Key messages for fostering active learning.

Observe and reflect on what arouses children’s curiosity, looking for signs of deep involvement to identify learning that is intrinsically motivated.

Provide stimulating and novel resources and experiences related to children’s interests to encourage involvement.

Enable children to exercise choice over their activities – setting their own goals and methods.

Ensure children have time and freedom to become deeply involved in activities.

Be aware of how children gradually gather and process of information, and help children to maintain their focus over time. Perhaps use photographs and talk about their activities, and keep significant activities in evidence rather than being routinely tidied away.

Support children to focus their attention, providing stimulation through shared attention or calming over stimulated children as needed.

Help children to become aware of their own goals and to evaluate their own successes, by verbalising with the youngest children what you see them trying to do and then encouraging them to talk about their own processes and successes.

Avoid rewards that give control to the adult, and be cautious in using praise.

Recognising children’s successes and showing an interest in how they approach what they are doing is a constructive reward.

Be Explicit in giving feedback on behaviour that shows children’s learning processes – such as concentrating, trying different approaches, persisting, solving problems, and having new ideas.

Support and encourage relationships between peers, children teaching each other, and as a community learning together.

Help children to begin to identify with values of the community so that they are able to feel they choose to act in line with these. Give reasons and talk about consequences of behaviour, rather than giving commands.

Break down complex skills into subgoals, where children can enjoy success and build motivation for things that are not immediately attractive.

Encourage children to persist with difficulties, trying again or in a different way.

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