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Introduction

________________ SELF EVALUATION Through this essay I aim to reflect on my personal and professional development over this academic year. At the beginning of the academic year I evaluated my own personal and professional skills through a self-audit (see appendix 1). I selected the Early Years Practitioner Status (EYPS) standards (2012) to use as a criteria to evaluate my skills against, as I believed this was relevant to me since I currently work within the early years, and my future career aim is to be an early year?s teacher. Evaluating my skills against the standards helped me form a better and clearer vision of myself in regards to which skills can be considered as my strength?s and which areas need further improvement. Through my self-evaluation, I pleasantly found that I was achieving most of the standards to some extent, as I was already applying them in my current work as a pre-school leader. For example, all five standards in the first topic of supporting the healthy growth and development of children are all a part of my current job role. Within this essay I aim to reflect on how my professionalism has developed through the use of these skills. Similarly, like in any evaluation along with my strengths I was also able to identify the skills which I needed to improve on. My self-evaluation highlighted that there were many areas that needed development in order to make my professional practice impeccable. However, within this academic year due to commitment to my studies and other work related issues improvement in all areas could not be achieved, and so I selected three key areas that needed improvement and created an action plan (see appendix 2) to help me achieve improvement in these areas. Through this essay I intend to reflect on how these areas have developed and how the action plan has helped in achieving the set targets. ...read more.

Middle

Appendices Appendix 1 SELF AUDIT Key Strength skill A skill which is developing currently An area for improvement 1. Support the healthy growth and development of children from birth to the age of five. Standard How it is applied within my role. Know and understand how children learn and develop and how this can be affected by individual circumstances Application of knowledge whilst observing key children at work. Support individual children through all areas of learning and development as outlined in the EYFS. Same as above. Using the EYFS to plan activities for children/ Encourage and support children?s learning in ways that are appropriate to their development. Same as above Support children through a range of transitions Supporting children settle in when starting in the pre-school room. Know when a child is in need of support and when to refer to other relevant services. Staff training attended as well as knowledge from studying safeguarding at university. 1. Work directly with children and in partnership with their families to facilitate learning and support development. Understand the important influence of parents/carers, engaging them effectively to support their child's wellbeing, learning and development Maintaining constant contact with parents through home school diaries. Communicate effectively with children from birth to age five, listening and responding sensitively Communication with children at work and also key worker of a child with speech difficulty Promote positive social and emotional behaviour, attitudes and independence. Promotion through the various activities within the preschool and the relationships with children. Circle time talks. Know and understand the significance of attachment and how effectively to promote it Building good relationships with key children. Knowledge of attachment through university module. Develop and sustain respectful relationships with children and their families. Working in partnership with families of key children at pre-school. 1. Safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Know the legal requirements and guidance on health and safety, safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and the implications for early years settings. Regular health and safety checks. ...read more.

Conclusion

This has helped us all gain a greater understanding of situations and a better understanding of everyone?s individual perspective. By understanding colleague?s perspectives we have been able to share our workload more efficiently and seen a great difference in how we deal with different situations. We also have independently reviewed our reflective logs and this has helped me to learn to evaluate my responses critically. Improving planning through incorporating children?s interests I feel that the steps taken to improve planning have also helped develop my quality of observations. Initially I was unsure on how I would manage to incorporate all the different interests of every child within the planning. Nevertheless, after involving parents in the selection of the various themes to use throughout the term, I discovered that a lot of the children shared similar interests. This made me feel more at ease in developing the planning. Involving parent?s views in helping me achieve this goal also helped strengthen my skills in working in partnership with parents. I found that involving parent?s views was very beneficial as not only did they feel valued but they showed a greater interest in the learning the children did within the nursery. Supporting children?s transitions. Through well planned fortnightly visits to the local primary school children have become familiar with the reception class teacher and have shown greater excitement of playing in the reception class room. As a result of children becoming familiar with and developing a relationship with the reception class teacher many children are confident and enthusiastic about their move to the school in September. The stay and play open session for children joining us next year have also been very successful as it has provided me an opportunity to meet the parents and get to know them a little, it has also helped me understand a little about the stage of development these children are currently at. I intend to use this knowledge to help me plan some good settling in activities for the beginning of the year and maybe the children can share their experiences about attending the open day. ...read more.

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