Small Moments, Big Impact: Supporting Children’s Learning at Home

A child’s learning does not begin when they start in their early years setting. 

Long before then, children are learning through stories, songs, conversations, play, movement and everyday routines at home. 

The research is clear: these ordinary moments can have an extraordinary influence on children’s language, confidence, self-regulation and later success in school. 

For early years settings, that makes the home learning environment one of the most powerful places to start when working in partnership with families.

Research shows that children’s Home Learning Environment (HLE) plays a major role in their early development. 

There is considerable research showing the importance of children’s Home Learning Environment (HLE). In fact, the HLE may even more impact on children’s learning than high-quality early education and care. 

What is the Home Learning Environment (HLE)?

The HLE refers to the opportunities for learning that occur in the home. This includes toys to play with, books to share, and paints, pencils and crayons to draw with. The most important learning opportunities occur through conversations and play between the child and others at home. The activities which have the strongest impact are those in the area of language and literacy. These include conversation, pretend play and shared enjoyment of books, songs and nursery rhymes.

How to make the most of the EEF’s Early Years Evidence Store

The Education Endowment Foundation’s Early Years Evidence Store is a fantastic resource for early years leaders and educators.

It brings together research evidence, practical examples and video clips to help educators explore what can make a difference to children’s learning and development.

But there’s a question I’m often asked in my work with early years settings and schools:

How do we move from reading the evidence to actually using it to improve practice?

That’s the focus of my new free 30-minute video guide.

A practical guide to using the Early Years Evidence Store

In the video, I walk you through:

• What the Early Years Evidence Store is, and how it fits with the wider EEF resources for early years
• Who it’s for, and why it can be useful for both leaders and practitioners
• How to use it for quality improvement rather than simply as a source of information
• A worked example showing how you could use the Evidence Store with a team to identify priorities and support improvement
• Practical next steps to help you put what you've learned into action

The aim isn't simply to help you get familiar with research evidence.

It’s to help you use that evidence as part of a process of professional learning, reflection and improvement.

Free resources to help you get started

I've also created a set of free resources to accompany the video, including:

• A downloadable PDF of the PowerPoint
• Quick links to key EEF resources
• An action planner to help you turn the evidence into practical next steps

Understanding the key person approach: a quick guide

Babies, toddlers and young children in the early years need consistent, warm and responsive care from the adults they spend time with. Consistency matters for all children, and especially for the youngest.

The key person approach is a powerful way of ensuring that each child can be known, cared for and treasured by a special person. It’s also an important way of ensuring that parents feel confident and know who to talk to if they have any concerns or important information to share. 

An effective key person approach builds on attachment theory. Every child needs warm, loving and consistent care from their special adult. That strong relationship helps children to become more confident and to develop a wider web of relationships with other children and with adults. 

Choosing childcare and early education for your baby or toddler? Here are 8 key things to look out for

Recently, quite a few friends and colleagues have asked for advice on choosing childcare and early education for their baby or toddler, usually when returning to work. 

Drawing on my 30 years' experience working in early years, here are 8 key things to look for when you visit a nursery or childminder setting.

1. Trust Your Instinct: Above all else, prioritise your feelings about the setting. Ask yourself if the environment feels safe, kind, and supportive. While reputation and online ratings are important, your parental instinct combined with careful observation is a highly reliable guide to making the best choice for you and your child.
2. Check for the Key Person Approach: Look for a setting that understands the Key Person Approach as a way to build a strong emotional bond between the early years educator and your child. Ask what happens when the key person is not there—for example, is there is a 'co-person' backup? Or is it a small team so every staff member can get to know your child well. Childminders are naturally well-placed to offer this type of strong, consistent care, but check that the childminder understands the Key Person Approach and will not be over-stretched by adding your child to their setting.

The myth about Ofsted, the DfE and early writing

 

An unhelpful myth has taken root in early years education: children should avoid writing altogether until they can spell simple words correctly and form all their letters accurately.

This misunderstands an important point. There is a big difference between expecting young children to complete formal writing tasks before they are ready and encouraging them to experiment with marks, symbols, drawing and early writing.

This myth has two sources. The first is Ofsted’s Strong Foundations report, which argues that “curriculums for writing often introduce complex tasks too early”.

The second is the Department for Education’s Writing Framework. This states that “emergent writing” (experimenting with making marks and drawing) is “not a necessary stage that children have to go through before they can be taught to write letters and words”.

On one level, I think both of these comments are sensible and helpful.

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Starting with Ofsted’s argument, I have often seen children in Reception being expected to write sentences - for example, about what they did at the weekend - when they may not all be developmentally ready for this task.

They may not yet have the oral language needed to say a full sentence aloud. They may also lack the physical control or letter knowledge needed to write it.

In this position, children often toil unhappily at the task and quickly start to feel that writing is a slog and something they dislike.

In these instances, it would make more sense for the school to focus on helping children with their oral language development. Speaking in sentences and using a rich vocabulary to talk about their experiences and feelings will help them a great deal with the process of composing what they want to say before they write it down, in later years.

Likewise, they will benefit from a focus on physical development, allowing them to build the core strength and dexterity needed to write.

Research evidence also points to the importance of learning the correct way to form letters before beginning to write at length.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) recommends this in its Preparing for Literacy guidance report as an important step on the road to a fast, fluent and efficient handwriting style. The alternative is that bad habits, like poor pencil grip and incorrect letter formation, become embedded, needing to be unlearned later on.

The recommendations of both the DfE and Ofsted therefore make sense. And yet I know, from speaking to educators and school leaders, that these recommendations have led many to believe that we should not be encouraging children in the early years to write at all.

Read on in TES

Why we need workforce reform in the early years

Early years practice has changed significantly over the past few decades.

Today, schools report that they have many more children arriving into Reception who are not ”school-ready” - whether in terms of their learning or their personal, social and emotional development - than ever before.

Yet the early years workforce has not significantly changed to adapt to those different needs.

It’s not because there isn’t evidence to suggest what might work better: robust research studies such as the Effective pre-school, primary and secondary education project show that better levels of staff qualification in the early years are associated with better outcomes for children.

Meanwhile, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)’s guidance on the deployment of teaching assistants offers many findings we can sensibly apply to the early years.

Read on (£) in TES

Why SEND reform depends on the early years

The number of children described as having special educational needs and disabilities in the early years is rising fast. Research in 2023 by Dingley’s Promise, the national organisation that supports children with SEND in the early years, found that around eight in 10 settings reported a significant increase, and more than half stated they did not have “any more spaces” for new children with SEND.

It is common to hear of children being put on part-time timetables because their setting or school is unable to meet their needs for a full day. This means that the children who need early education the most have the fewest hours, if they are not being turned away completely.

Many early years educators, meanwhile, are genuinely overwhelmed as they try to meet a very wide range of needs. All of this is contributing to a sense of “crisis”.

It’s a sentiment that mirrors perceptions of SEND across the education sector. The Department for Education has recently described the SEND system as being “on its knees”, and will set out how it plans to address this in a White Paper later this year. 

SEND in the early years

The early years foundation stage (EYFS) shapes children’s earliest learning experiences. As such, it is arguably the point at which the SEND crisis begins - and it is, therefore, an area worth looking closely at when considering overall solutions.

Indeed, a recent evaluation of the Sure Start programme by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that a higher rate of identification of developmental difficulties when children were younger, together with better early support, was associated with lower levels of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) in secondary school.

Despite this, it is still common for children in the early years to receive lower levels of funding and support than older children. We need to reverse that, with fair funding for the early years. 

Read on (£) in TES magazine