EYPS Support: Sustained shared thinking
Jackie Basquill, Edge Hill University lecturer, describes how a full-time pathway EYP student found evidence for Standard 16: Engage in sustained shared thinking with children.
Angela Oldfield had previously qualified as a Key Stage 3 and 4 teacher in Religious Education. She decided to extend her experience by gaining EYPS through the full training pathway.
Angela's placement with three- to five- year-old children was at Crossens Nursery School in Southport. She was able to gain experience of the Reggio Emilia approach as well as assist the team through an Ofsted inspection that rated the nursery outstanding.
Angela took every opportunity to develop the children's language. As they played with a game that involved matching animal shapes to silhouette shapes, they likened them to shadows. Angela used this conversation to develop an activity with the overhead projector.
She began by demonstrating how to make a shadow with her head and the children quickly joined in. They noticed how they could make their shadows move around and that sometimes they looked big and at other times small. Angela asked them what made this happen, and encouraged them to experiment, using open-ended questions. The children began to look around for other objects to make shadows with, while discussing the different effects. The group decided that by moving objects away from the light the shadows became 'bigger' and 'blurry'.
They introduced dinosaurs to the game and Angela asked them about the different types of dinosaurs. They developed a story and moved the toys closer to and away from the light to make the shadows bigger to fight the smaller dinosaur shadows.
The conversation turned to colour and different pieces of cellophane were brought over to see if they would make shadows. The children noticed that they made colours on the screen, whereas the toys and puppets were 'silver'. Angela urged them to think about where else they would find shadows.
Angela recorded the conversations and used this as part of her evidence. She also used a digital camera to record the children's investigation as it developed.
