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Unit 7 Play and learning in children’s education
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Appendix 1 shows a job description for a nursery practitioner, one of the first skills listed is the ability to
work in a team and build and maintain appropriate relationships with both parents and other professionals;
communication is the basis of any relationship and imperative when catering for a child’s learning needs
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Communication with parents is also very important
when providing care for individual children, the child’s primary care giver knows the child best and will be able to
provide the practitioner with information regarding the child’s learning styles and habits at home; the practitioner
can then adapt and plan provision to best suit the child
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Practitioners must be able to keep records of children’s development and learning journeys, this is
essential for providing suitable care to children, by having knowledge of a child’s development stage the
practitioner can plan to meet the child’s individual learning needs and through continued observation; the
practitioner will be able to view the child’s progress and assess whether the child is getting the most of the care
being provided
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All practitioners regardless of position or setting must attend regular
training courses in compliance with legislations such as Health and Safety (First Aid) regulations 1981 which
requires all work places to have a designated first aider who must attend relevant training courses
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As well as legal legislations in place in the setting, practitioners must abide by the
settings own policies and procedures; these are put in place to ensure that the children are kept safe and are given
the care they need
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Good knowledge of legislations relevant to Early Years is also key to providing adequate
provision, children with special educational and behavioural needs require different sorts of care; the practitioner
must be able to adapt their care plans to accommodate for and effectively help SEN children
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Another
practitioner at the school is a SENCO and advised me on the best course of action when working with the children
with special educational needs; I have since put this guidance into practice and have seen the positive results it has
produced
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Current, I’m working with a boy with autism providing 1:1 care, I see the child’s mother every
morning who lets me know about how the child’s feeling on that day and any other important messages, she also
lets me know about any out of school services she’s using with her child and how they’re helping him, by knowing
this I can change my style of practice to ensure the child achieves their potential
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Educational psychologists help children with a range of emotional and social, behavioural, speech and language,
and learning difficulties through working with the child, their parents and practitioners
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An educational
psychologist can show the child ways in which to control issues such as anger and anxiety, all of this work can then
be communicated back to the practitioner
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Educational
psychologists may also support groups of practitioners to develop children’s self-esteem and social skills, along with
introducing new methods of providing learning opportunities for children with SEN
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The parent’s wishes must be respected as they often know their child best and have the right to their say in any
decisions concerning their child
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This
communication between professionals and parents allows for effective information sharing, in turn ensuring the
child’s needs are met promptly, thus reducing the need for long term service use
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In some cases a child and their
family may be working with Social Workers due to their domestic situation, this may include the parents not
looking after the child properly or the child may have already been taken into social care
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The social worker may also help
children with behavioural problems due to their family situation through regular meeting with practitioners and
explaining their potentially violent behaviour, allowing for adequate care to be planned and health and safety
arrangements made
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Children who always fail at
tasks, due to them not suiting their needs, may begin to lose confidence and may shy away from future activities
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Play provides the platform for children to learn new things and also develop a range of other skills
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Sure Start centres run sessions like this weekly for children below
statutory school age, these sessions range from pre-natal and anti-natal classes to transition groups for children
entering education
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The Forest School initiative allows children to experience the outdoor environment safely
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The environment in which the children enter during The Forest School programme
can be, for some children, a completely new experience and the only time they frequently get outdoors
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The woodland
environment also presents the children with different kinds of problems to those they’d usually face in other
environments; the unique experience allows the children to take control of their own learning in an informal, nonstructured fashion, in turn boosting their self-esteem and self-confidence, making the experience individual to that
child, further enhancing a child’s independence
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The children are constantly faced with new challenges in the ever changing

environment and never encounter the same surroundings and situations in different session, this compels the
children to take risks and create original ideas
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The children move out of their comfort
zone and build their confident at the same time
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In 1837, Friedrich Froebel established his first Kindergarten after developing his own educational method
highlighting the importance of play in a child’s development and learning
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A to Z of Play in Early Childhood,
p
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He encouraged
pretend play and play with other children, believing that relationships with other children were as important as the
relationships that had with adults
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Through repetitive
play, the young child learns about cause and effect and that though a toy is absent from sight, it is still around
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A child of this age will line up 4 blocks and 4 more and then count up to 8
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 Concrete Operations: 6-11 years
From physical experience, the school-age child learns to conceptualize
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Strategy games and
brainteasers help children to begin thinking logically and lay the foundation for the acquisition of formal logic
later on
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H
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This is a concept often used with children, younger children don’t understand the line between good and
bad, consequences teach children what is bad and why
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A child’s successes should always be praised,
showing them that hard work is important, but also, when a child makes a mistake they should be praised for
trying
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” (Department for education (2012) Development matters in the
Foundation Stage (EYFS) p
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The EYFS
also sets out 3 characteristics for teaching and learning, these being: Playing and exploring (engagement), active
learning (motivation), and creating and thinking critically (thinking)
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The EFYS’ Early Learning Goals must be taken into consideration when planning for the provision of children at the
foundation stage
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It states that a child aged 826 months
“Builds relationships with special people…Uses a familiar adult as a secure base from which to explore
independently…Plays cooperatively with a familiar adult
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8)
This shows that interactions through play are vital to a child’s social development however younger children
require this play to be with a familiar adult’s to begin with-a primary care giver or keyworker- this will then slowly
decrease as the child becomes more confident interacting with other children
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By the age of around 30 months the child should happily fully engage in group play and should start to initiate play
with others, this is when planning educational play activities is most important as this is when the child is more able
to focus on the learning side of the activity now they’re comfortable with the social skills it requires
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Planning for a safe play environment ensures that it’s
safe for the children to be taking risks and enables them to become more independent and confident
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It suggests that, rather than introducing a topic or skill to children
then focusing on it until it’s mastered, a topic should be briefly introduced then left and then come back to that
topic sometime after; it’s shown that this allows for the children to create their own way of thinking about the
subject then have something to draw on when they come across it again
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This
can be a problem however due to curriculum frameworks and structured long term plans that require a topic to
take place during a certain period of time, therefore not allowing for the time needed between introduction and
the main topic like the approach suggests
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By celebrating a range of different holidays the practitioner is helping the child
to discover the wider world and learn respect for all people; some children in the group may follow different
religions, they should be given the chance to talk about their culture if they feel comfortable to, this helps to create
a positive and inclusive atmosphere for all children
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Practitioners should consider the diverse needs of all children while planning, this can be done through
the use of other agencies working with the child, their knowledge of the child can help them to show the
practitioner ways of adapting their practice to the child’s needs
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Though many of the children a practitioner works with
may be the same age, they’re likely to all be developing at different rates and require different care because of this
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By observing how a child responds to and engages with an

activity can show the practitioner whether this is something that the child likes or dislikes and in turn will or won’t
engage with, if a child isn’t engages in an activity they’re not getting the most from it
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The
practitioner may then use these observations to plan the next activity, ensuring that it’s interesting and engaging as
well as slightly challenging to the child in order to encourage them to achieve their potential
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These observations can then be used by the practitioner in the form of
reflective practice
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This can be done using one of the two reflective cycles by Kolb and
Gibbs, I prefer to use Kolb’s reflective; this presents four stages: Concrete Experience → Reflective Observation →
Abstract Conceptualisation → Active Experimentation, then back to the beginning
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Reflective cycles can be done for individual children as well as activities, this can
be a form of assessment and a way of tracking a child’s learning and tailoring activities to suit their needs through
assessing their strengths and weaknesses
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Each type of observation allowed for me to assess the child in a
different way although some were more time consuming than others, the checklist provided a very general
overlook on Child A’s development and didn’t take long to complete whereas the narrative went into a lot of detail
however took a while to complete
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Another crucial factor affecting practice, while making observations, is
maintain confidentiality, this is important as it protects the child’s information
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The Data Protection Act 1998 requires for all
information regarding the child be stored safely and securely and only shared with concerning authorities, there
are a number of reasons why a child’s information should be kept confidential, these reasons should be respected
and never challenged

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