Early Years update - March 2010
Forthcoming events
Early Years Saturday Conference: Creativity and Innovation in the Early Years
We are delighted to offer an exciting, not-to-be-missed early years conference on Saturday 24 April in the Glasgow Hilton Hotel. The conference will feature expert speakers who will discuss and debate creativity and innovation in the early years:
Play and the 3Cs: Creativity, Communication and Collaboration
Professor Iram Siraj-Blatchford (Professor of Early Childhood Education, Institute of Education)Early Years – Creativity and Innovation from the BBC
Sara Harkins (Head of Cbeebies) & Nick Simmons (Head of Learning & New Media, BBC Scotland)Innovation in Early Years Education
Dr Stephen Breslin (Chief Executive of Futurelab)
To register, go to the event page.
National Under Threes Advisory Group Meeting (NUTAG)
This multi-agency group, who meet on a regular basis to address and discuss issues related to pre-birth to three, are delighted to announce that the Scottish Government has agreed to fund and support the making of a pre-birth to three DVD/CD resource for all practitioners working with young children. This resource is expected to be produced by the summer of this year. Look out for more information on the Early Years Online website.
Pre-birth to Three Conference
Learning and Teaching Scotland are delighted to announce the next Pre-birth to Three Conference entitled Positive Outcomes for Scotland's Children and Families.
The Conference will take place on 19 May 2010.
To ensure a fair representation across the country, it has been decided that LTS will invite local authorities and key agencies to nominate participants. On this occasion therefore, there will be no direct application process to Learning and Teaching Scotland. Further information will be available in due course on the Early Years Website.
International Early Years Glow Summit
The Early Years Team, in collaboration with key partners, is planning to lead the first ever International Glow Summit in May: How Curricula Around the Globe Promotes Listening to Children.
This innovative event will provide early years practitioners and policymakers across six different countries with the opportunity to share and compare thinking and practice in relation to the theme.
In particular, this live, online conference, which will be hosted through the medium of Glow, will provide an opportunity for Scotland to showcase Curriculum for Excellence and how it places children at the heart of our policy and practice. A steering group has been created comprising HE representatives and early years practitioners to take forward the planning of this first Early Years International Glow Summit.
This first Glow Summit will be for invited guests within the six different countries including Scotland and we would then aim to invite a wider audience to participate in future Early Years Glow Summit events.
National Assessment Resource
The Early Years Team is currently supporting early years practitioners from across Scotland to create and develop a diverse range of assessment examples for the new National Assessment Resource (NAR).
The NAR, due to be launched in the autumn, has been created to support local authorities and practitioners in reviewing their current approaches to assessment.
The NAR will contain a range of high-quality assessment guidance, resources and illustrations of learners’ performance.
For more information, please read the article about the National Assessment Resource in the new Early Years Matters magazine, due to be distributed to all primary schools and early years settings in March 2010.
The Real Starting Point – Research Shows the Way
The Early Years Team and the Glow Team at Learning and Teaching Scotland were delighted to host a specific Early Years National Glow Meet Session as part of the Glowing Thursdays programme. We were delighted to have an exciting line up of Early Years Professionals participating in this free CPD opportunity:
Paul Bradshaw, GUS Project Manager, from the Growing up in Scotland Study (GUS)
Jacqué Fee, Assistant Director, Children and Families Research and Development Centre, University of Strathclyde
Jean Carwood-Edwards, Early Years Team Leader, Learning and Teaching Scotland
Jane Stirling, Early Years Development Officer, Learning and Teaching Scotland.
They discussed how practitioners can use the latest research findings to inform and enhance their practice for the benefit of all children and families. Paul discussed the latest research findings from the Growing Up in Scotland Study and how practitioners can use this information within their current practice. Jacqué Fee, Jean Carwood-Edwards and Jane Stirling discussed the research commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland, 'CPD and Working with Children Under Three'. They also discussed how Glow was able to facilitate the dissemination of the research during recent partnership activities with North Lanarkshire Council.
The recording of this Glow Meet session is in the process of being edited and will be added to the Early Years Online website in due course.
Recent and current activity
Scottish Learning Festival 2009 – new CPD opportunities online
This was a very successful festival and we were delighted to have a variety of exciting early years events. Professor Carlina Rinaldi, President of Reggio Children and Director of the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre in Reggio Emilia, Italy, was one of the spotlight speakers and Professor Ferre Laevers, Centre for Experiential Education, University of Leuven, had a keynote presentation and an early years seminar at this year’s event.
There is now a variety of CPD opportunities on the Scottish Learning Festival website. Look out for:
During the two days of SLF, events were captured by Conference in Pictures, where the images were drawn live, transforming verbal content of seminars and discussions into a gallery of pictures where delegates could then view, revisit topics and contribute with their own comments via post-it notes.
The images made during SLF 2009 are now available to view. Have a look and feel free to use them in your work.
Early Years Play and Active Learning Conference
3 October 2009, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
This Early Years Curriculum for Excellence Saturday Conference provided an opportunity for practitioners to join the debate about the role of play and active learning as the new Scottish curriculum is implemented. If you missed the opportunity to attend, the post-conference materials and the videos from this event will be published online soon. Please look out for this on the newly designed homepage of Early Years Online.
FE Early Years Curriculum for Excellence Conference
7 November 2009, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
Following the success of last year’s conference for staff in further education who are involved in the Early Years and Childcare Programmes, LTS was delighted to offer a second event. The conference was also open to private training providers, and it considered how Curriculum for Excellence can become embedded in Early Years Training Programmes. If you missed the opportunity to attend, the post-conference materials for this event will be available online soon.
National Early Years Local Authority Forum (NEYLAF)
The third meeting of the forum for local authority staff with a specific responsibility for quality improvement in early years was held in on Tuesday 1 December 2009.
This forum arose because local authority staff across Scotland indicated that they would find such a resource informative and fruitful. The purpose of the forum is to enable early years local authority officers to work in partnership and share good practice across Scotland. The forum events are organised by a NEYLAF planning group who are able to suggest the proposed speakers and the format and content of the forum meetings. The next meeting will be held in May 2010.
New early years teacher specialism at University of Strathclyde
A new early years teacher specialism funded by the Scottish Government will start at the University of Strathclyde on 14 May 2010. This specialism is for teachers currently working in nursery and early primary (2½ - 8 years).
The recruitment event will be held on Tuesday 30 March from 4 to 6 pm in Room 217, Sir Henry Wood Building, University of Strathclyde.
For more information please contact:
Professor Aline-Wendy Dunlop
email: a.w.a.dunlop@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 0141 950 3600
New online resources
Details of some recent additions to Early Years Online and other areas of the LTS Online Service.
Active Learning: Creativity in Primary Classrooms
We would like to encourage practitioners to send us photographs of active-learning environments in primary 1 or primary 2 classrooms that show great examples of how you are developing meaningful and engaging contexts for children.
We would like to offer examples of how children experience stimulating, effective learning in ways that are appropriate to their needs, so send us your pictures and we will upload as many as we can.
Please visit the Early Years Online website to find out more.
Early Years Matters
The current issue of Early Years Matters (autumn, Issue 16) is still online and we would encourage practitioners to read the articles and use the online facility that enables you to comment on them too. This issue has articles on Curriculum for Excellence, taking learning outdoors, bright ideas for active learning, eight features of effective planning and much more!
The next edition of Early Years Matters (spring, issue 17) will be distributed mid-March 2010 to all primary schools, early years settings, colleges, universities, local authorities, HMIE and many other relevant agencies. The online version will be available shortly after.
Growing Up in Scotland report
Growing Up in Scotland is the longitudinal research study following the lives of 8000 Scottish children and their families from birth through to adolescence.
They are now half way through the fifth round of annual interviews. Progress has been good, with response rates staying high at around 92% and 'sweep 5' will run until May 2010.
This year the interviewers are visiting the families with children in the younger cohort only, who are now aged just under five. Some of these children have started primary school.
You can read a copy of their October newsletter to find out more about the case study.
New downloadable resources
New downloadable images have been added to the website to depict food, drink and physical activities. Visit our Illustrations area to view and download images.
Curriculum for Excellence Early Level DVD resource
We are delighted to announce that the Curriculum for Excellence Early Level DVD resource is now online.
This multimedia resource will support practitioners as they implement Curriculum for Excellence at the early level. It shares practical ideas from a variety of pre-school and primary settings.
These materials are for all practitioners working with children from pre-school settings and primary. Copies of the DVD packs have been sent to all pre-school and primary settings in Scotland.
Please visit the website to access the full range of materials.
LTS Early Years team update
National Early Years Glow Group
We would encourage early years practitioners to visit the National Early Years Glow Group within the National Groups list on Glow to explore the discussions surrounding Curriculum for Excellence, outdoor learning ideas, planning and good early years websites. We have some recent discussions developing around:
taking the class register in primary classrooms
a request for assistance on a research project on Glow in early years
discussions on planning
much more.