Observation, Assessment and Planning in the EYFS: Part 2: Enabling environments

As early years practitioners, we can set children up to succeed or fail. The importance of the environment in supporting children as successful learners cannot be overstated. Children need an environment that has been designed to support success, rather than one that actively prevents achievement.

It is vital that as practitioners, we recognise the significant part that we have to play in creating what the EYFS describes as an 'enabling environment' - one in which children feel safe, secure and able to take risks, knowing that they will be supported whatever the outcome may be.

It is possible to plan for children to succeed, and it is essential that we take time to reflect upon how the environment that we provide for the children, both physical and emotional, promotes successful outcomes for all. To help you reflect on the quality of the environment you offer to children in your care, ask yourself the following questions.

What are the choices available that I would wish for if I were a child in this room?

There can be no doubt that choice is motivational, and that a high level of motivation is a significant contributor to high attainment. Children need an environment in which they can choose, not only in order to exhibit tastes and preferences, but also so that their natural creativity can be supported and enhanced, across all areas of the curriculum.

Most importantly, children are likely to choose situations, materials and activities that support their achievements, either because they enjoy them, they feel confident to participate, or there is a significant level of challenge in the activity that they will find satisfying.

Practitioners must consider the choices that children are allowed to make in all aspects of provision. In writing, for example, children may wish to choose not only when to write but also where to write and what to write with. Equally importantly, children also need opportunities to choose what to write about and who to write for. Incorporating such choice into an attractive graphics area will help many children, but they also need to know that such choices would be available elsewhere in the setting, including outdoors.

Lack of choice can restrict children's achievement across all areas of learning. Consider the construction area. If the adult chooses the resources to be used, then some children may not be motivated to build. If children are not encouraged, nor indeed permitted, to combine resources, then the range of outcomes may be restricted, leading adults to make inappropriately low judgements of the children's work.

Clearly, choice needs to be supported - not only in the way that resources are labelled, displayed and maintained, but also by the adult making the available choices explicit to children and valuing the choices that children subsequently make.

What will the choices on offer do to foster a positive self-image?

Having a choice in what they do and how they do it will foster children's growing self-esteem far more than if no choices exist. However, in order to be most effective in building self-esteem, the choices available must reflect the nature and the needs of the children with whom we work. Two-year-olds, for example, need to be able to choose to move around - both indoors and out, experimenting with different combinations of resources in a wide range of contexts. No two-year-old would ever choose to sit at an activity for long periods of time, and they are highly unlikely to perform well in table-based tasks. The physical environment should reflect the needs of the children so that it does not have a negative impact on their achievements.

Equally, resources should be provided to reflect the children's interests. Familiarity with a resource will mean that children will use it with confidence, demonstrating what they already know and can do. An example of an area of provision where this could have a significant impact is the book area.

This area can be an excellent context in which to observe children responding to a wide variety of texts, but it is vital to ensure that the texts made available reflect the broadest range possible.

Simply put, a selection of non-fiction texts will encourage some boys to use this area, while others would enjoy to browse through a range of magazines and comics, having the opportunity to discuss characters from the media in which they feel they have some expertise.

When assessing children's talk, it is absolutely vital to put them in a situation where they will feel confident to speak. Surrounding them with familiar narratives is one way to elicit a self-assured response. Discussing children's preferred books, comics and magazines with parents and carers is the most effective way of reflecting upon the content of your book area.

Try to reflect all the languages of the community that surrounds your setting. Parents can be invited to contribute examples of such texts and they may be happy to be involved in creating some tailor-made signs, labels and notices.

Personalising resources using photographs of the children will also build self-esteem. Create a 'mini me' of each child by photographing them individually, printing off the pictures, cutting around the children and laminating them. Offer them as a choice alongside other small-world figures. These miniature people are particularly effective when used in construction play, but they can be combined with a range of small-world resources and storytelling activities.

Is the range and scope sufficient to cater for the developmental needs of each child in the room?

If planning is to be most effective, then it should begin with the nature of the children. All young children are curious, love to move freely, investigate with all their senses and enjoy a wide variety of imaginative play scenarios. Curiosity can be particularly hampered by poor or ill-informed provision, and may often be seen as an inconvenience! Children need to be allowed to devise their own investigations, using all their senses where appropriate. Too often adults become 'guardians of the excitement', prescribing the area of interest, or diverting children's natural enthusiasms for their own purposes.

We are fortunate to have statutory curriculum material that commits us to planning from children's interests. Practitioners have to feel confident that the definition of 'children's interests' includes behaviours, desires and dispositions, such as building, discovering, exploring and moving, and need not necessarily be defined by a topic or a theme. (Incidentally, adult-chosen topics and themes mean nothing to the youngest children in the EYFS, and their use for planning purposes merely constrains the variety of potential learning outcomes.)

The outdoor environment clearly has a significant role to play in providing for the developmental needs of all children. In the right outdoor setting, with supportive adults, children's curiosity can be nurtured, their imaginations fed and physical skills developed. Behaviour which is perfectly natural for children that may seem difficult or inappropriate inside, becomes legitimated outside.

Space allows freedom of movement. The lack of a ceiling and walls inspires talk, as the outdoors is less regimented than inside. The changing seasons and weather stimulate questions and discussion, and role play can be of a more adventurous kind.

As many children achieve more highly outdoors than in, practitioners should ensure that their observations reflect this. All areas of the curriculum need to be planned for in the outdoor area, so that all children have the opportunity to be assessed in a context where they are likely to succeed.

To return to the issue of choice, if outdoors is to be effective in enhancing children's achievement, access to the provision needs to be as free-flow as possible. Being able to choose when to go outside is empowering for children and helps to build self-esteem.

Are the choices exciting, stimulating, attractive and challenging?

Clearly, choice is only supportive if the choice is 'worth it'. Being able to choose between two photocopied worksheets will not help any child. It is the role of the adult to make the learning opportunities in the setting look absolutely irresistible - so that children cannot wait to get their hands on them! This should be equally true of child-led and adult-led activities. There is no reason why an adult-focused activity cannot be as appealing as one which is child-initiated.

An adult-led maths task may be in the form of a game - for example, one which has been designed with the children in mind, with attractive playing pieces and the opportunity for children to invent their own rules subsequently. A writing task might be inspired by small-world play, or the adult might get involved in the role-play area, to stimulate storytelling through dramatic play that will inspire children to write for a variety of purposes.

Involving the children in decisions about areas of provision and how they might be enhanced, designed and created is an invaluable way of stimulating problem-solving and increases a sense of ownership in the children. 'Letting the learner do the work' gives adults more time for observing and allows a wider range of possible outcomes.

To take role play as an example, working with the children to decide what it might be, rather than presenting them with a predetermined, themed area, will reduce behaviour management problems and offer a rich context for discussion. You will be giving the children the opportunity to pursue the kind of role play that is important to them, and they will have a starting point with which they feel confident.

Involving children in building the role-play area offers a multitude of opportunities. Selecting appropriate materials and tools, using the language of mathematics to solve problems and using talk collaboratively are simply three of the learning opportunities that present themselves before the role-play area is even created. A role-play area made entirely by adults, without the children present, would not offer such possibilities.

In what ways can the choices build on children's experiences and extend these experiences to open new horizons?

All early years practitioners are keen to extend the knowledge and understanding that young children have about the world around them. Acquiring new knowledge is most effective when the learner is able to link it to understandings that they already have.

The implication for practitioners is, of course, that they make time to find out what children already know and can do. Conversations with parents and carers are crucial, as they are experts when it comes to knowing what fascinates their own children. Planning then needs to allow space for bridges to be built between current knowledge and fresh understandings.

Young children need to feel that their experiences outside the world of education are valued, and that the culture of their home is regarded as having worth. There can be a tendency in those working in education to value certain kinds of experiences more than others. This may lead to reluctance on the part of some children to share their experiences. These children are then regarded as being unwilling, or even worse, unable, to talk with confidence.

An example of this might be a young child who has a keen interest in the media. They may enjoy cartoons and other forms of animation, be used to having comics or magazines shared with them, and be encouraged to use media-related toys in their play. A sensitive practitioner would work with these interests, and use them to make links to a greater variety of texts. This might begin with something as simple as putting a selection of Thomas the Tank Engine comics near to the train set, along with some attractive picture books about trains. In this way, the child's interests are respected and valued, but they also have an opportunity to enrich their experiences with texts that build on their prior knowledge.

If we have the widest variety of texts available, then more children are likely to respond positively, and with obvious enjoyment, to stories, songs and rhymes. For children to readily turn to story language in their play and their learning, they need to be able to use the language of stories with which they are familiar, not just those chosen by the educator. Assembling a collection of both picture books and non-fiction texts that support children's predictable centres of interest will mean that we are always able to extend children's knowledge further.

Where is the potential for awe, wonder, contemplation and reflection?

Ultimately, adults have to give children time - time to watch, to stand and stare, to ask questions and to reflect. We are often in too much of a hurry, rushing through the curriculum content in the name of coverage, at the expense of periods of quality learning experiences for the children.

We need to offer children the opportunity to engage with concerns that are close to their hearts, and build a curriculum around them. It is vital that we do not become gatekeepers to understanding - offering limited pathways to the new knowledge that we would wish the children to acquire, rather than opening up the widest variety of routes to learning. If we do not do this, then our observations and assessments will not reflect the true potential of the young learners with whom we work.