Excellent teaching
- promoting opportunities for play both indoors and out, alone and with others, quietly or boisterously. This allows children to find out about things, try out and practise ideas and skills, take risks, explore their feelings, learn from mistakes, be in control and think imaginatively. Playing is an important feature of learning for young children
- skilfully interacting with children to facilitate learning. Examples of positive interactions include communicating and modelling language, showing, explaining, demonstrating, exploring ideas, encouraging, questioning, recalling, providing a narrative for what they are doing and facilitating and setting challenges
- providing opportunities for social interaction. Developing emotional security and social skills. Being with other children and adults stimulates ideas and involvement that move learning forward
- encouraging active learning. Young children need to move; they need to learn and remember things by taking experiences in through the senses. Sitting still for too long can disrupt the learning
- planning experiences and new things to explore. Children’s deep curiosity leads them to use all their senses to explore, in real hands-on activities, and then put the information together in their own minds to form ideas and make sense of the world
- allowing plenty of rich opportunities to encourage communicating skills both verbal and non-verbal. This includes talking about their play with someone who responds to their ideas. It is important that they have a chance to express their own ideas, as well as have conversations to hear other people’s ideas, extend their thinking, and use language about learning
- creating opportunities for children to represent their ideas and experiences. Children deepen their understanding as they recreate experiences or communicate their thinking in many different ways such as in role-play or small world play, pictures, movements, models, and talk
- meeting physical and mental challenges. Working out what to do, trying hard, persevering with problems, finding out and thinking for themselves are opportunities for developing real understanding
- teaching new skills. Children learn by watching others or being shown how to do something. Adults or peers may directly instruct, model, guide or demonstrate
- allowing children to practice repeat and apply skills. Rehearsing skills in similar tasks or new contexts helps children to build mastery, to enjoy their own expertise, and to consolidate what they can do
- being playful and having fun. There is no place for dull, repetitive ‘production-line’ activities. Laughter, fun, and enjoyment, sometimes being whimsical and nonsensical, are the best contexts for learning.
