In response to growing pressure on early years practitioners to adopt a 'tick-box' approach to recording children's progress, Celebrating Children's Learning sets out a bold, alternative vision for assessment in the early years. Drawing upon an inspiring collaboration between London nursery schools, this book explores and reconsiders the purpose of observation in early years settings. Contributors provide a range of examples to guide early years practitioners as they develop their own methods of observation. Play, social interaction, and cooperation with parents are shown to be valuable opportunities for keen observation. Chapters discuss: - moving beyond data-focussed assesment - Characteristics of Effective Learning - ensuring inclusive assessment - collaborating with parents from diverse backgrounds - outdoor learning - a Forest School approach. Inspiring and empowering, Celebrating Children's Learning is essential reading for teachers, practitioners, and students involved in early education.

In response to growing pressure on early years practitioners to adopt a ‘tick-box’ approach to recording children’s progress, Celebrating Children’s Learning sets out a bold, alternative vision for assessment in the early years. Drawing upon an inspiring collaboration between London nursery schools, this book explores and reconsiders the purpose of observation in early years settings. Contributors provide a range of examples to guide early years practitioners as they develop their own methods of observation. Play, social interaction, and cooperation with parents are shown to be valuable opportunities for keen observation. Chapters discuss: - moving beyond data-focussed assesment - Characteristics of Effective Learning - ensuring inclusive assessment - collaborating with parents from diverse backgrounds - outdoor learning – a Forest School approach. Inspiring and empowering, Celebrating Children’s Learning is essential reading for teachers, practitioners, and students involved in early education.

Celebrations and Festivals is part of the very popular and established Planning for Learning series through...series which aims to make planning in the Early Years Foundation Stage practical, easy and cost-effective. There are six weeks of planning around six different themes. Each theme includes two activities linked to the areas of learning to develop children’s skills across the Curriculum. The themes cover: - Celebrating diversity - Special food and clothes - Card, lights and decorations - Music festivals around the world.

Voices from the Classroom illustrates that teachers have a leading voice in the policies that impact their students and the profession of teaching. The aim is to provide a rich and broad view of the impact of inquiry in the classrooms, from primary to higher education, and to provide a window into the perspective of teachers. Voices from the Classroom allows us to advance this mission by identifying and then turning educators' ideas into action. The publication includes chapters on issues ranging from dyslexic students' geospatial abilities to teachers' differential behaviours related, student characteristics and the experiences of refugees with bullying in the educational space. All the contributions published in this book emerged from real classrooms: our teachers and researchers conducted their research by drawing on their experience as educators. We believe that these insights into everyday classrooms, and the issues affecting them, are crucial to making teaching and learning better. We hope they can help drive real, positive change for students and teachers.

Shortlisted for the UKLA Academic Book Award 2013! Literacy empowers learning across the whole curriculum and language is at the centre of all learning in primary education. Aware of current curriculum developments and drawing from the latest research Teaching Primary English encourages teacher education students to develop a deeper understanding of the essential issues involved in teaching English in order to approach a career in the primary classroom with the confidence and knowledge required to succeed. Taking a fresh approach to the main elements of teaching primary English, Jackie Brien strikes an engaging balance between the practical requirements of English teaching and encouraging informed reflection on key aspects of primary literacy. This is essential reading for everyone studying primary English on primary initial teacher education courses including undergraduate (BEd, BA with QTS), postgraduate (PGCE, SCITT), and employment-based routes into teaching. Jackie Brien is Curriculum Leader for English, Communication, Language and Literacy at the University of Chester.

This book provides a comprehensive text that brings together the core issues surrounding the training of early years students.

- Experiential activities for celebrating secular and sacred seasons of the year - Activities can be used in any setting: church, home, school

Offering a brand new approach to teaching music in the primary classroom, Teaching Music Creatively provides training and qualified teachers with a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively deliver a creative music curriculum. Exploring research-informed teaching ideas, diverse practices and approaches to music teaching, the authors offer well-tested strategies for developing children’s musical creativity, knowledge, skills and understanding. With ground-breaking contributions from international experts in the field, this book presents a unique set of perspectives on music teaching. Key topics covered include: Creative teaching, and what it means to teach creatively; Composition, listening and notation; Spontaneous music-making; Group music and performance; The use of multimedia; Integration of music into the wider curriculum; Musical play; Cultural diversity; Assessment and planning. Packed with practical, innovative ideas for teaching music in a lively and creative way, together with the theory and background necessary to develop a comprehensive understanding of creative teaching methods, Teaching Music Creatively is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students in initial teacher training, practising teachers, and undergraduate students of music and education.