In this episode, Claire interviews Anna Lucas at the Lead, Learn, Lancs conference. Anna is an Early Years specialist who is committed to supporting practitioners and improving outcomes for young children. She has also worked extensively as a phonics consultant with managers in local authorities, schools and settings to embed good practice. Alongside this, she is also a children’s author following the publication of her first book ‘Sir Undercracker’.

Anna talks passionately about the value of continuous provision when it is utilised to its full potential. She firmly believes that teachers need to immerse themselves in the learning opportunities alongside their children to support children in making important learning connections.

She shares practical tips for the classroom and encourages teachers to trial a new approach in the expectation that they will quickly notice the rapid improvement in the quality of teaching and learning.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Continuous Provision
  Continuous provision is planned, purposeful and open-ended play which is commonplace in nursery and reception classrooms. Despite its widespread presence, it is not always utilised to its full potential. Research indicates that it takes hundreds of repetitions of a task or concept for the brain to make learning connections, but only around twenty repetitions during guided play. The same dramatic impact cannot be seen by free play without adults having some direct involvement with the children.
  
  
• Step away from the blue table!
  In some classrooms, adults can be found sat down at “the blue table” with a small group of children while the rest roam free and play however Anna advises that this set-up does not make the best use of continuous provision. The children begin to make a distinction between ‘work’ and ‘play’ and the resources in place do not reach their full potential. Anna suggests preparing play-based activities for the teacher to invite the children to join in with allowing opportunities for children to learn without realising. This leaves children more likely to repeat and apply those skills to other scenarios and games. Children mimic everything we do. If we want children to learn how to learn using continuous provision, we need to be in there with them modelling how it’s done.
  
  
• “I wonder what would happen if…”
  Rather than setting up staged activities or directly asking questions to assess if children have met learning objectives, Anna suggests that whilst playing with the children, you can incorporate key questions into those conversations. For example, when you are covering positional language, you could say something like, “I wonder what would happen if you put that frog in the water.” These suggestions can then be adapted to suit the ability of each child. This allows teachers to sensitively, skilfully, surreptitiously and subtly lead and extend the children’s learning.

• Elklan
  Elklan offer speech and language training courses for educators and parents. They focus on how communication is developed in early years. Anna discusses how we can often overload children with questions and how starting questions with “I wonder if…” helps children to feel that there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer giving them more freedom to think and ponder before they answer. She shares the concept of the ‘question hand’ where for every question, you also offer a comment, repetition, expansion and explanation.

• Speak less.
  It can take children 10 seconds to process language. When children pause following a question or comment, don’t feel you need to dive in and ask more questions. This limits the conversation, resets the communication, overloads the children and can lead us to answer for them.

• Play Plenaries
  Anna suggests taking photos of the children learning then putting them up on display at the end for children to talk about what they were doing and in turn what they learnt. This simple activity strengthens the value of continuous provision.

BEST MOMENTS

“Play needs to be at the heart of children’s learning.”

“We need to give children permission to play… Play is super food for children’s brains.”

“The optimum conditions for learning are where adults play with the children.”

“Albert Einstein says it, not Anna Lucas, ‘Play is the highest form of research.’”

“We shouldn’t stop play just because we close the door at the age of 5.”

“If you’re bored as a teacher then the children are going to be bored as well.”

“You don’t go into teaching lightly. It’s hard work.”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Lucas Training and Consultancy: http://www.ltcl.co.uk/
The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ 
Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ 
Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ 
LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/ 

ABOUT THE HOST
Claire Riley

Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.

Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.

Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.

 The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.