Challenge in child-initiated learning

The adult role in supporting and extending play in the early years

Few would dispute the importance of providing opportunities for children to lead their own learning in the early years. The difficulty tends to lie in ensuring that children are challenged during these times and supported to learn at the highest levels. Key to this is improving the quality of interactions between adults and children and ensuring the environment is doing its job.

In this course, I will share a clear, concise approach to improving child-led learning as well as showing how this works in practice from the many schools and settings I have worked in partnership with. 

I will highlight numerous ways of extending children's learning, through tuning into how they learn best, their passions and preoccupations, and providing resources and adult interactions that support this.

A toolkit of self-evaluation resources to help teams improve their practice in this area will be provided as part of this day.