I have been thinking a great deal about the Foundation Stage, which might be a little odd as my son is now in Year 1. Actually it is only with perspective that I am able to see the true nature of the Foundation Stage and how it really does what it says on the box– lay the foundations for future learning.
I am the sort of middle class parent who might be expected to want a quite formal learning environment. I am certainly the type of parent Mr Gove has in mind when he wants the traditional teaching brought back into schools. This is because my son is very able and exactly the sort who needs a great deal of challenge to keep him happy and learning.
We have been incredibly lucky with schooling so far. My son attended a wonderful outstanding Nursery school. He spent much of his first year there dressed up, either as Spiderman or Batman, or in a princess dress. The staff told me in no uncertain terms they were not going to teach him to read. In fact they did teach him to read, but not in any formal way at all. My son’s interests actually lay in writing so they taught him really excellent motor skills. He’s a left hander so might be expected to be poor at handwriting like his mother! My mother was called into school when I was seven to be told I still could not use scissors and I was the last person in my class to be allowed to use a pen. My son will have no such difficulties due to the excellent motor skills he was given at Nursery. Also because he was so interested in writing the staff showed him how to form letters correctly and when he asked what letters were, they told him. They never sat him down and forced him to write, he chose to do it and consequently has remained a very keen writer; he entirely understands why writing is useful and enjoys it. It also meant that by the time he started Reception he had a good idea of most of his letters and had done such good Phase 1 work he was easily orally blending and segmenting.
Reception was another wonderful experience for him. The staff described him as being busy all the time. Of course that was because he was allowed to be busy all the time. He often planned what he was going to do that day on the way to school and the amount of work he undertook was amazing. We saw the Learning Journey book and it absolutely captured who he was. It was full of him organising things and playing complex games, sometimes by himself and sometimes with others. It had a detailed observation of him making a cinema. This involved over 80 minutes of sustained concentration (how many Year 4 children do you know who can do that?) while he arranged the chairs after negotiating the space with other children. Then he made tickets, using both his reading and writing skills and maths– he decided how many tickets he would need and how many he still had to make. He also made a clock to show when the film would start and accurately worked out how many minutes time it would be. This was not an isolated event, he often undertook projects of this nature, using such a variety of skills I joked he could run the class.
Other learning opportunities included making a car park for all the bikes, using spacial awareness, numbers and large quantities of chalk. He also wrote little notes, all the time. We regularly got notes shoved under the door on the weekends, mainly asking when we were going to get up. He wrote (and still writes) every day, for choice. He wrote lists, always adding to my shopping list at home, as well as lists of things at school. He put labels everywhere, including on the front door when ‘selling’ the soup we had made together. He also did maths all the time– though he would not have known that was what he was doing. When we were out he used to start mentally adding things at the shops, which meant he had no problems turning that into formal written sums. And crucially he actively enjoyed all this work; he was hooked on learning.
I should add at this point we have never been pushy parents, nor did we do any ‘work’ with our son at home. (In fact I’d be perfectly happy if he had no homework now!) All we did is talk to him from the moment he was born, take him regularly to the library, also from babyhood, and read to him everyday; his father as much as me. I know we gave him lots of experiences and vocabulary but I credit the Nursery and school with his academic performance.
The reason I started thinking about his Foundation Stage years was because he is doing so well in Year 1. I have watched him use all those skills he developed in previous years and apply them to what he is doing now. That, I believe, was the true strength in his excellent teachers. They understood that application is the essential element, so often missing from teaching I have observed. My son did phonics every day, but the key to the teaching was the staff enabling him to use his phonics and the same was true of his maths. The casual observer might have thought he was ‘only playing’ but it was really consolidating huge amounts of learning. And he was not the only one– I look at his class now and the majority are reading and writing with confidence.
Whilst I know my son is very bright and loves learning, I do not believe he could have achieved what he has done this year without the teaching he received in Nursery and Reception. For that I thank the staff, because they let him be the person he is, no-one put him off learning or trying out ideas, instead he had what I consider to be the very best start to his education, one that will carry him forward for the rest of his life; truly it is the foundation stage and he got the best.
Seen in an Outstanding Nursery
I am 3.
I am not built to sit still, keep my hands to myself, take turns, be patient, stand in line, or keep quiet.
I need motion, I need novelty, I need adventure, and I need to engage the world with my whole body.
LET ME PLAY.
(Trust me, I’m learning)
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