Work matters: Leadership - Make it add up

I had a wonderful opportunity recently to spend the day in the reception year of my local school. Under the guise of community relations and observing transitions to new environments, this gave me a fantastic look at how the EYFS is being embodied in an alternative environment to nursery.

Alongside establishing workshop areas, continuous provision, child-initiated enquiry and a free-flow approach were the demands of preparing these children for the routines and structure of a school environment; not only where to put their bag or how to do up their school tie, but an introduction to more formal numeracy and literacy programmes.

Whether children should be starting formal education at such a young age is of course another debate, but I observed a room full of four-year-olds engrossed in the tasks at hand.

While we embody the ethos of learning through play in all we do, unrestrained by the demands of a structured literacy or numeracy programme, I did wonder, how much are the children accessing the provision we offer?

These children enjoyed a well-resourced environment rich in number and mathematical opportunity. However, they were not accessing any of it. The dominoes were largely ignored, numbers in all their forms adorning the walls had become part of the backdrop and opportunities for mathematical language and reasoning were being missed by staff.

Later in the week I introduced a small group to a game involving an oversized dice and multilink. The opportunity for problem-solving, mathematical language and manipulation were offered and the children grasped it readily, using the concepts and terminologies as they were introduced.

Areas typically shied away from by staff can be embraced by even the most reluctant when made within their comfort zone. Numeracy must be touched, held, discussed and played with. Providing the resources and expecting children to learn through a process reminiscent of osmosis is not enough.