I Changed To Child Led Learning And Never Looked Back

The Art of Letting Go by Cornisheyfsteacher

I was often told that it takes a certain type of person to become a teacher – even more specifically; an early years teacher. Passionate, caring, organised, dedicated, inspired, motivated, resourceful, thoughtful… the list is endless. The responsibility and privilege that comes with the job, having a chance to make a difference and be a part of, arguably, the most important stage of a child’s development, is an honour to say the least. I love my job, I enjoy my job, but I completely understand why it is one of the most challenging professions to be in. The workload, the expectations, the weekends lost to ‘I just need to catch up on…’, the last minute scrutinties, lesson observations, it is never-ending. I am at the start of my career. Now approaching my third year of teaching in a Reception class. I want to share the start of my journey, some of my biggest revelations and the sense I have made of a sector that is continuously evolving.

Full Disclaimer - I work in a school based in beautiful Cornwall, close to the beach, surrounded by nature. I have been teaching for two years but I have worked in the Early Years for over five, first as an EYT and then running parenting programmes and supporting vulnerable families as a Children Centre Worker. My classroom is part of an EYFS Unit, shared with another reception teacher. I am extremely lucky to have an incredibly supportive leadership team, who have trusted and understood the changes we have made in the two years since I started. Work-life balance has been a struggle for me, particularly at the beginning of my career. I can whole heartedly say that this has improved and continues to do so, through letting go, evolving my mind-set as a facilitator and adopting a Hygge inspired approach to teaching and learning.

When I first started, our Early Years followed an immersive curriculum. This entailed days spent prior to each term, mapping out a specific question based topic. Planning curriculum coverage, mapping out a six weekly theme, thinking about how we will enhance our environment into that theme, continuous provision ideas, challenges, weekly maths lessons, literacy lessons, topic lessons. I can remember the days I spent visiting my new classroom; cutting out endless amounts of leaves so that I could immerse my classroom into a woodland themed topic, creating woodland creatures for displays, laminating endless resources. This was all decided, prior to meeting the children, prior to getting to know their interests. I can still remember the anxiety I felt, trying to fit in the agreed weekly topic themes on top of supporting them through their first transition into life at school.

The real trouble came when I realised that the majority of my class loved dinosaurs and would continuously disregard my pre-prepared, Pinterest ready, small world woodland animal set up. The woodland themed challenges, beautifully arranged, quickly brushed aside in favour of getting out the water colours or making a junk model to take home to show Mummy and Daddy. Lots of opportunities missed, lots of unnecessary workload, minimal impact. I quickly realised that the daily focus was the adult inputs, getting ready to ‘teach’ that next pre-decided lesson that fit into a pre-prepared topic that in no way reflected the children and their interests.

We started by reviewing our daily timetable. We stripped back the adult led sessions and increased the time spent in continuous provision, all adults absorbed in play and present in that moment. I knew we were heading the right direction.

Spring Term topic was easier to plan. Naturally, this was because we knew the children more, we knew their interests, we knew they loved to listen to well-loved traditional tales such as The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks. Again, I set to work enhancing my classroom, creating the Three Little Pigs construction corner, a particularly large beanstalk held to the ceiling with thousands of wall staples, a Goldilocks themed home corner - a Pinterest ready classroom. You can imagine my dismay when the children barely took interest in my beanstalk, the Little Pigs construction corner continued to be used for making large towers and the carefully placed furniture in my Goldilocks home corner got completely reorganised as the children made a shop. The hard truth; what was I expecting? 

Fast forward into my second year of teaching. We agreed to move completely away from a Topic based approach. We cleared the classroom of all topic themed enhancements and aimed for a homely, natural, blank canvas. The new focus – handing the control over to the children.

At first, this was a gentle transition, we continued to plan weekly. However, each Friday we held a planning meeting with the children where they would decide what they would like to learn about the following week and revisit sparks of interest and the curiosity we had observed. Instantly, workload decreased, pressure lifted, engagement increased and progress escalated. The focus shifted from fitting in a curriculum, to using instant assessment to respond and ‘teach’ tailored specifically to the children’s current interests.

We then stripped back the classroom, both inside and out, adopting elements of Early Excellence into the classroom design. More emphasis and value was placed on the importance of open ended, high quality, natural resources that can be used to enhance play, in many different forms and functions. Our displays moved from areas of learning, to celebrating the children’s achievements, identifying specific next steps, documenting how our learning has evolved and what the children have decided to learn about.

I was fortunate to be able to attend a conference delivered by the inspirational Alistair Bryce-Clegg (Watch Alistair at our conference here!). This again reinforced the important changes we have already made and gave me more ideas of how I could continue to develop our setting and truly put the child’s voice at the heart of our classroom.

At present, I am proud to say we have taken a complete step back, firmly putting the children in the driver’s seat of their learning and letting them steer which direction we go in. We now plan retrospectively, enabling us to respond instantly to children’s curiosity, imagination and next steps. We now teach responsible learners who are engaged, excited and enthused about what each day might bring and truthfully, I feel exactly the same. There is nothing more invigorating about not knowing what each day may bring, where the children will lead me and what we may discover.

We are true adventurers.

My responsibility hasn’t changed, I am a facilitator. I have shifted the control over to the children, learnt to be ‘in the moment’, responsive, reflective. I have embraced calm, I have gained control by starting the process of letting go. I am excited about the progress we have made so far and how this will inevitable continue to evolve as we welcome in next year’s new bunch of little ones. We are by no means perfect and have lots more to learn but I am pretty proud to be heading in, what I believe, is the right direction!  

To follow the journey and wonderful ideas further from our guest blogger head to https://www.instagram.com/cornisheyfsteacher/?hl=en or follow using instagram handle @cornisheyfsteacher