22-36 months: a child’s motor skills begin to manifest. Adults can assist self-help and independence in eating, dressing and toileting. Self-esteem becomes important for individual achievements, with a sense of self, engagement and encouragement with others forming the basis of rapid language development. Children have more notions about past, present and future, as well as dangers and limits.
30-50 months: interactive play with others forms the skills of sharing and co-operating, being independent, and being aware of others’ preferences. When children come into contact with ‘warm and close’ carers, they feel encouraged to make healthy food and exercise choices. They begin to enjoy conversations which contain ‘information and guidance’.
40-60+ months: children have a more ‘confident sense of their own identity’ and have more information about social rules and how to engage successfully with others. They have more ease in participating in shared activities and have become used to learning with peers and adults within the context of media, technology, and how this relates to ‘cause and effect’.
Within the context of the above six phases, EYFS maintains the government agenda of ‘Every Child Matters’: a policy of supportive services with the stated ‘Five Outcomes’ for children: (1) being healthy; (2) staying safe; (3) enjoying and achieving; (4) making a positive contribution; (5) and economic well-being, not being held back from achieving potential by economic disadvantage.
A broad description of EYFS goals encompasses the skills of literacy and numeracy which a child is expected to have gained before approaching KS1. There are six areas covered by the early learning goals and educational programmes: (1) Personal, Social and Emotional Development; (2)Communication, Language and Literacy; (3) Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy; (4) Knowledge and Understanding of the World; (5) Physical Development; (6) Creative Development. No programme is taught separately from another as all are equal in their importance and form a multi-contextual learning and development . Learning in all areas is advocated to take place within ‘planned, purposeful play’, including adult-led and child-initiated activities.
By the end of the EYFS children should be interactively confident. They should be able to listen to others and take their turn at contributing relevantly. This involves speaking and writing, and transforming these processes into play and learning. While participating in music and narrative song contexts, children will have got used to using phonic knowledge to write simple words leading on to more complex words. They will be accustomed to holding a pencil and writing the form of letters.
As they are ready to enter KS1, children will have started reading a range of words and sentences within a narrative context to identify characters, write lists of words, to link sounds to letters, and to recognise punctuation. They will begin to find information in text concerned to where, who, how and why.
Furthermore, the EYFS standards for the programme of problem solving, reasoning and numeracy expect children to ‘enjoy, learn, practise, and talk about their developing understanding’. They are expected to recognise numbers from 1 to 9 and to associate them with everyday life. They will have started to recognise comparatives and to begin to understand adding and subtracting. Additionally, theywill have reinvented observed patterns while recognising position and shape.
A child’s knowledge and understanding of the world is another crucial aspect of the EYFS. Children must ‘encounter creatures, people, plants and objects’ and become used to experimenting with a wide variety of materials. In these investigations they will have selected materials to build and adapt structures of understanding. They will have recognised features of their own world and compared these to other cultures and beliefs.
Physical development forms a strong part of the EYFS structure, involving movement and co-ordination and imparting knowledge connected to making healthy food choices. Along with this, it is children’s creativity which is the focus of EYFS support, which aims to inspire children’s thoughts and feelings through art, music, movement, maths, design and technology. Individual attainment and communication through all spheres and senses is to be encouraged.
At the end of EYFS it is expected that children can understand what is right, wrong and why, and that they can also consider how their ‘words and actions’ have effects for themselves and others. They will be able to dress themselves independently and attend to their own personal hygiene. Children will also be used to selecting ‘resources and activities’ independently and also realise that everyone has different ‘needs, views, cultures and beliefs’ and that all these deserve respect.
It is now necessary to describe the transition phase from EYFS to Key Stage 1. ‘A Sure Start for Every Child’ by Ruth Pimental, Deputy National Director of the Foundation Stage was sent out to schools in June 2005 and comprises a training package to ensure a smooth transition form EYFS to KS1.
()
Initially, the document refers to the promise of the previously mentioned ‘Five Outcomes’ and the findings it wishes to address: firstly, parents want to meet the Y1 teacher prior to their children’s start and wish to be informed about what is expected of their children. Additionally, schools need to provide parental guidance to prepare their children and take into account any difficulties for non-native tongue speakers. It is also advocated that policy makers advise teachers on how to steer the transition with guidelines on how to improve numeracy and literacy and teacher pupil interaction. ‘Sure Start’ also lists the teacher qualities necessary to produce the ‘Key Elements of Effective Practice’ (KEEP) in order to maintain the transition stage: ‘committed, enthusiastic, and reflective; sensitive, positive and non-judgemental’.
Sara Brown, Transition Co-ordinator for Goxhillschool, Lincolnshire, has outlined how she advises on the transition (September 2009, to be reviewed July 2011).
()
According to S Brown (2009) teaching and learning should foremostly suit the needs of the child and be ‘harmonised’ towards the assessment from the previous EYFS class with a ‘professional regard’ to the previous learning experience. Most important, she advocates that by the end of the Foundation period the Y1 teacher visits the children and collaborates with the EYFS teacher to discuss the data from their own record keeping or that which is on the E-profile (available from local authorities) and how this can be incorporated into future planning.
Regulations made under Section 99 of the Childcare Act 2006 require EYFS providers to supply information about the assessments they carry out to local authorities. In the case of children with special educational needs below the level of the scales and who require an alternative assessment, providers must use other systems and approaches to establish how they can be helped.
The EYFS assessment will stay with the child until new scale points are added in the spring National Curriculum levels. The information included in the assessment includes the child’s knowledge of sight words, phonics and letters, reading ability, the last assessed piece of writing, and the child’s foundation profile in terms of how each target was achieved. The EYFS Profile summarises the outcome of all learning achievements within the 13 assessment scales of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. All providers and carers with which the child has been in contact must be recorded as well as records of formal and informal discussions which have taken place with parents and carers.
This information will help the KS1 grouping of pupils as well as necessary adaptation of the curriculum to suit the foreseeable future targets. In terms of the teaching style, the ‘kinaesthetic’ (Brown, 2009) approach to learning is continued over into year one. The classroom should have a similar visual appearance to the reception room , offering areas for role-play, art, creativity, music, listening, ICT with quiet areas for reading.
The transition from foundation stage to key stage 1 is also discussed by other teachers on the website ‘teachingexpertise. com’. Included also, are the transitional issues which present typical challenges for children adjusting from EYFS to KS1.These were recorded in the website’s listed NFER study which came to the following 8 conclusions:
1) children needed to habituate from a ‘play-based curriculum to one with structure.
2) In KS1 there is a need to have learned independence, and good listening.
3) Children with specific needs, such as an additional language or a lower ability at certain activities need greater support at KS1.
4) Children miss play and sometimes worry about the work.
5) Children like feeling grown up.
6) Parents want more information about the transition.
7) Staff welcome training.
The study found that transition occurs where environments have ‘similarity’ and there is good communication so that change can happen gradually.
( Source: Dawn Sanders, Gabrielle White, Bethan Burge, Caroline Sharp, Anna Eames, Rhona McEune and Hilary Grayson, A Study of the Transition from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage One, DfES Research report SSU/2005/FR/013, London: DfES
This document can be accessed online at
)
Having discussed the transitional dilemmas, what can children, parents and teachers expect from the Primary curriculum of KS1? Taking the learning environment as a starting premise and thinking of children’s contact with computers and electronic media, how will this link from EYFS to KS1?
The new electronic Primary framework is supported by local authorities who are aware of the recommendations of the Rose Report (2008) which set out the Primary curriculum specifications. The framework will introduce the facility for customised planning, teaching and assessment, and the possibility to connect to a large range of teaching and learning resources using ICT for teaching literacy and mathematics.
At KS1, it is statutory to teach the use of ICT in English, mathematics and science, and teachers should make decisions on appropriacy.
It is advised that pupils should develop their ideas through the use of ICT in order to diversify and extend the range of their work and to enable communication of it through electronic media. However, it is advocated that ICT be used in EYFS through the six areas of learning development. Children need to understand that technology is linked to programming and they can be ‘ in control of it’
(ICT in the EYFS written by James Langley 27/10/09.
The KS1 learning environment will be multi-streamed, with children with SEN and learning difficulties following the same ‘objectives’ as their peers. Along side will be gifted and talented children who likewise will be attending to the expected ‘objectives’ while deeping and broadening their learning. Additionally will be children learning English as an additional language (EAL). All kinds of children are expected to receive the support they need.
The KS1 learning experience welcomes the contribution of adults ‘in and out of school’ as children start to recognise that their progress nourishes their ‘enthusiasm and motivation’. The child’s external environment becomes of interest in linking literacy and mathematics to learning, while conceptualising on non-fiction format which can help to explain the where, who, why and how of their investigations. Reading is taken from a large range of ‘high-quality fiction and non-fiction texts’ with an additional ‘read-aloud’ programme to provide ‘tune, rhythm and structure’ of language. Children will be able to make choices on what to read and are ‘encouraged’ to ‘self-correct’ their understanding of sentence structure and to express opinions about what texts they prefer.
During KS1, children will be working towards writing their own stories with structural content, the beginnings of punctuation with sentences, capital letters and full stops. In KS1 mathematics, children learn about place and value, the significance of 10 in the number system, and how to count in ones, twos, fives and tens. Problem solving will involve diagrams and numbers, while 2D and 3D shapes can be realised as well as pattern and sequence.
Finally, the main component of both EYFS and KS1, and which provides the link of both curriculums is the principle that children’s interactive talk is seen as crucial. Communicative language is to be encouraged, be it about the numeric problem needing a solution, the recounting of events to understand a narrative, the choice of a needed material, or the way that a problem could be approached.
Thus KS1 sees children becoming ‘critical thinkers’ as motivation is a core experience at this stage. Children start to ‘see themselves as readers, writers, and mathematicians’. They are more voluble and explain their methods and ideas, while learning about information processing skills which could be applied to other goals and subject domains. Similar to the six areas of learning development within EYFS, KS1 holds to the principles of the Primary SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning). This approach promotes positive behaviour throughout the extended school community to improve the relationships between staff, children and other members of the community.
Bibliography
1 Brown, Sara, 2005
2
3 Langley, James, 2009
4 National Strategies for EYFS and Primary Education
5 Pimental, Ruth, 2005
‘A Sure Start for Every Child’ by Ruth Pimental, Deputy National Director of the Foundation Stage, June 2005.
6 Teaching Expertise – the transition from EYFS to KS, 2005