British Science Week 2023
Connections
10th to 19th March 2023
Blog 2 - Connections - Starting with a question to support child-led learning and the influences of the High Scope approach plan-do-review on child-led learning.
Our second blog post for British Science Week 2023 (#BSW23) is looking at how we can start with a question to support scientific learning in the early years. We will also be exploring aspects of child-led learning, as they develop their own questions and we work with children to support this area of enquiry led learning. And think about the lessons we can learn to support scientific learning from the influential work of the High Scopes approach of plan-do-review with children.
Starting With a Question
Children are naturally curious and Piaget often referred to children as mini-scientists. All of our children have questions inside them that they love to ask and are naturally interested in the why and how things work or happen in the world around them. When thinking about this years topic for BSW23 of connections I think that this is such an important part of how children learn and develop in general; because learning in its very simplistic form is us making connections between different pieces of knowledge that we are obtaining.
Piaget often referred to this process as schematic learning and how we develop schemas of knowledge. These are the up to date ideas, knowledge and information that we hold about the world around us. Often in the early years we talk about schemas as the way in which children make sense of the world around them, Because we see repeated actions in their play, for example, a child within the trajectory schema will be exploring throwing, often drop things from a highchair, explore the movement of themselves and objects both vertically and horizontally. This is the way that there brains are making connections and learning about the all important world around them,
This is a recorded version available for teams or individuals of our popular webinar, ‘Again, Again, Again: Schema’s in the Early Years’ for those who cannot attend a live event.
Have you ever wondered why children do certain things again and again? This interactive webinar explores schematic learning, when children repeat certain patterns of behaviour over and over again. We aim to support parents and practitioners in identifying the schema’s that their children may be in and ways to support the different schema’s in our environment, activities and play opportunities.
As a constructivist Piaget spoke about the process of accommodation, assimilation and reaching equilibrium as we build on our schemas of knowledge about the world around us. I often think of schemas as boxes of knowledge/information. When we are assimilating these boxes (schemas) it is changing the information that we already have, where as accommodation is creating a new box (or schematic structure) of information to build with because something does not fit in with our pre-existing ideas. This then help’s us to reach a status of equilibrium, where there is no conflict between previous and new pieces of knowledge and information.
Tuning into children’s questions that they have about the world around them and how things work, is a fantastic way of exploring connections with young children. Whether that be questions that they have verbalised, such as, “Why is a tiger different to a cheetah?”. Or it is discovered through our careful observations of children’s learning and development that leads to supporting children’s enquiry-based learning through our careful interactions and enabling environments. For example, we have noticed that Tommy has been sat with the clipboard and the toy cars and is placing the cars at the top, watching them go down and saying “wow!”. We might extend this to support more child-led learning, for example, adding in different materials to make ramps e.g. pieces of wood or cardboard. We might add non-standard units for measuring etc. But we are following the child’s interest and lead throughout the activity.
Child-Led Learning
Maria Montessori was a key advocate for child-led learning. This is where the children control the narrative of their learning and the direction in which it goes in. It is very much about the child being in control of learning in a well-planned and prepared environment, where the role of the adult (or teacher) is to facilitate their learning’ whilst allowing them to lead, problem-solve and think of ideas for themselves. When children have more autonomy over their play and learning (remember play is learning!!) and are given the opportunity to follow their intrinsic motivations and interests we see higher levels of learning from our children, increased concentration and we will also see lots of STEM skills coming through naturally in their play.
A word of caution when being child-led in practise. Remember that the children may have different ideas to us, and that is completely okay. So we may observe something and think, I know we can plan to do x-y-z, but then it comes to doing it and the children are not interested but have rather gone in different direction. They may still do your planned idea, or they may show no interest and that is fine! Stand back observe and ask the children what they would like to do next and tune back into following their agenda of learning; this doesn’t mean our adult-led plans and ideas are bad. And I personally think there is time and space for both, but don’t beat yourself up when you realise there wonderful brains have gone in a different direction to your fabulous brain. They have just made different connections and it’s kind off incredible really!!
HighScope Appraoch - Plan, Do and Review
The process of plan - do and review that is adopted and implemented successfully by the High Scope Approach can be very beneficial to scientific learning and development and may be an approach that you want to consider introducing as part of your BSW23 exploration of the topic connections and beyond.
Plan - this is the children’s opportunity to talk about and share what they would like to do today and how they are going to do this.
Do - is the child’s exploration and play as they go off and do whatever action they have planned.
Review - is the opportunity to discuss, what they have learnt, how well they activity went, what could they do next and so on.
If you would like to find out more about the High Scope Approach please follow the link here for an informative video.
Sometimes within the UK we might use what we refer to as a K-W-L chart to support this process of plan-do-review. This is where for topics or new areas of interest we start with what we know, what we want to learn (where we articulate our questions and things that we want to do) and then we review what we have learned.
For example, if our topic is apples, we might know apple seeds grow into apple trees but we might want to know how? And then after some activities, exploration planned activities, hopefully we will be able to show what we have learned about the life cycle of an apple.
Thank you so much for reading our second blog for BSW23. We hope you are enjoying and finding them interesting, please do like, share with colleagues and comment. Follow us for our next blog post in our BSW23 series that will look at scientific learning and cooking.