Provocations for Learning...and Giveaway winners.

I love the term ‘provocations for learning’, as I think that it encapsulates what our Continuous Provision and indeed our wider environment both indoors and out should be about.

How are we actually prompting children to want to learn? Have we created a space that is interesting? Do we have resources that are intriguing and worth taking a detour from your route to the outside area to have a look at, to investigate?

Although we want our children to feel happy and secure within the provision that we create for them we don’t want it to become so familiar that they stop noticing it.

We want them to be independent and able to access resources for their learning and play, but we want those resources to be interesting enough for them to want to pick up and use time and time again.

My fear is that in some settings that the resourcing for Continuous Provision has become too uniform, too bland and almost a clinical. When I first started teaching a Reception classroom had tables, chairs and draws in it – Oh, and the occasional book case on the carpet. That was it. Then with the introduction of the Foundation Stage came the concept of open shelving, at child height, where children could self select from the bounteous resources that had hitherto been locked in the stock cupboard!

With this welcome revolution came the wide bottomed moulded plastic pot in three sizes and three colours with a matching spade, bucket and sand wheel. All of which you could display upon your lovely new blond wood shelves. These were giddy times indeed! The problem is, although the organisation and uniformity is appealing - everything begins to look the same.

 

Settings gained an awful lot in using furniture that promoted all of the elements of independence and self selection, often resulting in children independently self selecting everything on the shelves and making a nice pile with it in the middle of the carpet!

What I think we have lost is some of the thrill and interest that children get from looking, touching, feeling interesting and often unfamiliar objects.

We need resources that make children think. To give them a unique twist on a familiar experience.

Take this water area for example...

This has been created as a permanent feature. In these photographs it has been leveled around ‘pouring’ based on the skills of the children who are going to be using it.

All of these items are second hand, mostly car boot or online purchases. All will drip, drop and pour to some degree – so nothing new there, but what they do is to challenge children’s thinking and provoke their learning.

The metal reflects the light and gives a different feel to plastic when filled with warm or cold water. The kettles vary in size, weight and capacity to challenge children’s knowledge and problem solving skills.

Some of the spouts are fat and wide, some are  long and thin. There are two glass teapots that enable the children to see the movement of the water and also anticipate the moment when it will finally flow out of the spout.

There are metal scoops with long handles that make gathering water more challenging as well as kettles with side handles that use a whole different set of muscles to enable pouring.

There are taps that need to be manipulated and an urn and a samovar that need to be filled.

The skill that is being taught has been considered. The different levels of attainment have been accommodated, but the icing on the cake is the level of provocation – just through the resourcing.

In this sand area some of the very familiar plastic resources have been replaced with interesting alternatives that offer a whole new dimension to the experience.

In this Creative space I have used lots of interesting resources that children will want to look at and touch.

Everything from peacock feathers, sabre toothed tigers skulls to a small wooden man peeping through a stone.

I have put my little man under a plastic cloche from the garden centre. I tend to find that if you put anything under a cloche it makes it immediately ultimately more interesting. If you think that little fingers might not be able to resist having a quick poke about under the cloche, then you can always double sided tape it to your surface – or run mild electric current through it – whichever!

(The little man and the book behind him are all by author and artist Tracy Gallup. She has a series of really lovely little picture books all based on her sculptures posed around natural objects. They are well worth a look.)

A provocation can be something as simple as this little weather house barometer, tucked away on a shelf. Wherever I have used it the children have been fascinated by who is coming out of the house today and why.

Away from your shelving, you can also create individual provocations based around children’s interests or themes that you want to introduce.

I created these in wooden crates for texture, linking this one to the story of the Gruffalo, enhancing it with story stones and various open ended small world items.

This one is full of all things bear and brown. The camera encourages the children to look at all of the items in their box in a different way.

There is no end to the sort of thing that you can create. Just ask yourself the question ‘Does my environment provoke interest and therefore learning?’ If the answer is 'no', then get yourself to a jumble sale or car boot…fast! Organisation and order are brilliant for helping Early Years children to develop a sense of independence - and also to keep your environment running smoothly. But, as organised as your shelves are, if you aren't interested on what is on them then your children definitely won't be.

Obviously, everything you provide for children’s use should be safe and risk assessed before they use it!

Provocations for learning don’t have to be just restricted to areas of learning, you can also create smaller ‘Provocation Stations’ throughout your setting, both indoors and out. If you have fun with it, so will they!

Now for the winners of this weeks Giveaway.

The four LUCKY winners of a free place at an ABC Does Conference are...

Sarah Franklin

Amy Armstrong

Lesley Smith

Karen Botham

Well done to you 'lucky' four! Could you please email the lovely Fee at admin@abcdoes.com and let her know which conference you would  like to attend and she will sort you out.

Hope to see some of the rest of you at an ABC Does conference in the near future!

Have a lovely weekend

Alistair

 

Comments

[D.B.]

I love so many of your ideas but I often feel that they are for the 'ideal' setting. I could make some Gruffalo stones, they're absolutely beautiful, but by lunchtime they would either be covered in paint or thrown over the wall into the road (or both). The barometer people would be ripped out in less than 10 minutes. A peacock feather, wooden hand or camera would be in bits and in the mud kitchen by the end of the day. We tried a glass jar once - quite literally lasted less than 30 seconds.
I am in a setting that has some autistic children who don't necessarily understand that some things need to handled carefully, or indeed have the motor skills to do so. We also have a significantly higher than average amount of children within the child protection bracket - they are used to destroying nice things because it's the only way they know how to get attention from their parents. We do a lot of work with them on managing their feelings, we model how to use and look after things but, if they've had a particularly bad time at home, they will come in and destroy things again.
We love your blog and have spent hours looking for, collecting, putting together, creating and making fantastic and amazing things, only to see them decimated within a few days, if not 24 hours.
It's not the children's fault but it's totally and utterly soul-destroying for us. Over and over, time and again this happens until you get to the point of saying "Why should I bother going to so much effort when so few children reap the benefits before it's all gone."

[abc does]

Hi D.B.

Thanks for your comment. I can completely see where you are coming from. Working with young and immature children is challenging enough, but working with children who are going through emotional or physical turmoil on top of that adds a whole other dimension. Fee and I fostered for many years when our boys were younger so I can really empathise with some children's need to 'normalise' their environment by upsetting or destroying it, as that is all they know.

Most of the settings that I do sustained work with are in areas or high social deprivation and often have a high proportion of children with English as an additional language. What you are describing sounds a lot like them.

The setting where these photographs were taken is one such setting in the middle of Salford, Manchester. It is near the end of the third term in Reception now and many of the children have made amazing progress socially, emotionally and linguistically, meaning that they can access these resources . The 'majority' of them will now treat the resources with respect.

In settings where the children are particularly challenging, then I still use lots of provocations, but they would be introduced during small group time, and not left out in CP for the reasons that you stated. In a setting like that, where children don't cope well emotionally with long sessions of free choice like CP then you are far more likely to break the provision more often and have more regular small group time. I would then build up the CP sessions slowly over time as the children became more able to cope with level of freedom and choice.

I know how frustrating it can be when children mistreat the resources you have carefully chosen and worked so hard to create. I also appreciate that you acknowledge the fact that these are complex children and it is not their fault, but these are the children that need this sort of experience the most as they probably don't get it elsewhere.

Don't lose heart! It is a really difficult and often relentless job that you and your team are doing. Even though it might not always feel like it, you will be making a HUGE difference to the children in your care.

If there is anything you think that I can help you with, then don't hesitate to drop me a line at alistair@abcdoes.com and I will do my best to sort you out.

Stick with it!

Alistair

[snoo]

DB ...Just remember a problem is just a challenge in disguise! If we do not give children things that break then when will they learn about the properties of them, just as if we give them little risk they will not learn to work with it. (we also have a setting which is somewhat diverse!)

beautiful pictures ABC ...need to make more room in my store cupboards for all those found items!

[Gill A]

I ADORE the 'water feature'...
Many resources 'move' from their specific areas, if being 'used', (not destroyed, I agree that's a different issue), it doesn't matter.
(If only we could use your electric current 'suggestion'...what an effective deterrent to our 'out of hours visitors', muwhahahaaa!)

[Sarah]

Hi, loving the suggestions (as always). Having seen story stones before I always thought that a very talented person had painted them. I am not artistic so was inspired to have a go at making some Frozen story stones using decopatch glue. I printed some Frozen character pictures from the website and, using deco patch glue, glued them to some cobbles bought from the garden centre. The decopatch glue will not bleed the inks and so the pictures stay looking beautiful. You can even glue over the top for a shiny hard wearing finish. Very successful result and some fantastic roleplay from the children.

[Juanes]

Thanks for the tips and share all your information with us.
Very well written article.
http://careers-schools.com