Supporting Children's Learning - Introducing the Projects

Supporting Children's Learning is a module undertaken by second year students of BA (Hons)Early Childhood Professional Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford. One of the assignments for this module is an early learning project.

The project involves students, working in groups to select an area of provision within an early years environment. This can be any area of typical continuous provision that can be found within a nursery or Foundation Stage classroom. This includes, but is not limited to: construction; creative workshop; ICT; investigation and exploration; literacy; malleable materials (clay / dough); mark making; mathematics; music; painting; role play; sand; sensory / tactile; small world; or water; and all can be indoors, outdoors or both.

For our purposes, we have taken a definition - from Marsden Infant and Nursery School : 'continuous provision is defined as: ‘carefully chosen and organised high quality resources and experiences that are constantly available for children to access independently across every area of their learning.'

Early Years consultant Alistair Bryce Clegg says: ‘Continuous Provision continues the provision for learning in the absence of an adult. It is NOT just the resources that are continually available.’ His blog ABC Does is a great source for inspiration for continuous provision. He has also written a book on the topic plus ideas books for several different areas of provision.

For the project, each group investigates, sets up and documents one area of provision, showing how children’s learning would be planned for, implemented and recorded within it. This can be done in a setting, for people who work with children, or simulated in the ARU Early Childhood Research and Resource Room (pictured above). Each project is demonstrated to peers in an interactive way during a 15-20 minute seminar session.

Each project is also summarised in a blog post here. 
This blog will showcase the projects - with posts that are guest authored by each of the project groups.