The Seven V's of a Great Early Years Setting: Alphabet Sevens, #6
By Sue Cowley
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About this ebook
In this concise guide, Sue Cowley shares a wealth of strategies for creating a great early years setting. Whether you work in a nursery, a preschool, a nursery or reception class, or as a childminder, this book will help you improve and develop your practice. In this book Sue gives practical advice about clarifying a vision for your setting, and communicating it to others. She explores ways to give a voice to children, staff and parents. She examines the critical importance of speaking and listening in early learning and development, and gives advice on great verbal and non-verbal communication. In this guide Sue explores ways to use a variety of resources, approaches and techniques for play and learning. She also gives crucial advice to help your setting remain sustainable and viable in the long term.
This mini guide is written in Sue's much-loved honest and straight talking style. Her focus is on practical tips and realistic advice that you can use to develop and improve your setting right away. Read Sue's short guide now and find out how to create the best possible early years setting for your children.
Sue Cowley
Sue Cowley is a writer, presenter and teacher trainer, and the author of over 25 books on education, including How to Survive your First Year in Teaching. Her international best seller, Getting the Buggers to Behave is a fixture on university book lists, and has been translated into ten different languages. After training as an early years teacher, Sue taught English and Drama in secondary schools in the UK and overseas, and she also worked as a supply teacher. She now spends her time writing educational books and articles, and she is a columnist for Teach Nursery, Teach Primary and Nursery World magazines. Sue works internationally as a teacher trainer, as well as volunteering in primary classrooms, and helping to run her local preschool. You can find Sue on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@Sue_Cowley
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Alphabet Sevens
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The Seven T's of Practical Differentiation: Alphabet Sevens, #2 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Seven C's of Positive Behaviour Management: Alphabet Sevens, #1 Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Seven R's of Great Group Work: Alphabet Sevens, #3 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Seven E's of Reading for Pleasure: Alphabet Sevens, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Seven V's of a Great Early Years Setting: Alphabet Sevens, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Seven S's of Developing Young Writers: Alphabet Sevens, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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The Seven V's of a Great Early Years Setting - Sue Cowley
Introduction
This book offers a concise and practical guide to developing and maintaining a high quality early years setting. As with all of my Alphabet Sevens guides, it is designed to be quick and easy to read, with plenty of realistic ideas that you can put into place straight away. In this guide I give lots of questions for you to ask yourselves in your setting, as part of an ongoing process of self-reflection and self-evaluation. Whether you work in a nursery, a preschool, a children’s centre, a school nursery, or a reception class, this short guide is for you. Many of the elements in this guide will also be useful to you if you work as a nanny or a childminder. This book will help you develop a high quality setting, so that your children learn and develop in the best possible way while they are in your care.
Having trained as an early years/primary teacher, and after teaching in a variety of settings, I now work as a teacher trainer and education author. I have also helped to run my local preschool for the past six years. During this time I have learned a lot about how to make an early years setting as great as it can be. The aim of this book is to pass on the practical ideas I have discovered to other early years practitioners.
The early years sector is diverse, constantly changing and evolving: it runs from birth to the age of five. Increasingly, most young children attend some kind of early years setting in the time before they begin their statutory education, especially since the introduction of state funding for childcare. In some areas of the country, there is lots of early years provision within children’s centres, and in nursery classes in state-run infant or primary schools. In other areas, there is little or no state-run provision before statutory school starting age, and instead there is a patchwork of privately run and voluntary run settings. As diverse as the sector is, I have found it to be characterised by committed practitioners and teachers, doing the very best for the children in their care.
The ideas in this book will help you step back and take an overview of the provision you offer to your children and their parents. This guide will help you identify those areas where you are already strong, and focus on those areas where you need to boost your provision. My mini guide will help you make your early years setting as ‘great’ as it can possibly be. This is not a guide about how to get an ‘outstanding’ inspection result, although the ideas here should help you be successful when the inspectors visit. Rather, this guide aims to help you create the very best provision for all your children. And I sincerely hope it helps you achieve just that.
Sue Cowley
www.suecowley.co.uk
Please note that I have used the term ‘parents’ in this book to describe whoever looks after the child. This could include foster parents, adoptive parents, looked after children, children cared for by siblings or other family members, and so on.
The First V: Vision
Every education setting needs a vision of the care and education it aims to provide for its children: a clear understanding of the set of values that underpin everything that you do. This is sometimes referred to as an ‘ethos’. An ethos underlies everything that goes on in your setting, and it is passed on to the children through everything that you do. A ‘vision’ is like having an invisible banner, pinned up over your door, which says: ‘This is how we do it here.’ The clearer you are about your vision and values, and the better these aspects are understood by staff, children and parents, the more effective your setting will be. Where all the people who use or work in a setting buy into a consistent ethos, this is a very powerful force for learning and improvement.
Having a vision is about much more than just having a ‘mission statement’ that you put on your nursery banner, your preschool website, or your infant or primary school sign. It is about having a crystal clear view of what you want your early years setting to look, feel and be like for the children and families who use it. It is about having an ethos that runs through everything you do, like the message inside a stick of seaside rock. Sometimes a specific approach or theory about learning in the early years will underpin a setting’s vision. For instance, a Montessori nursery will apply the principles set out by the early years educator Maria Montessori; a Forest School setting will place a strong emphasis on time spent outdoors. A clear and confidently expressed vision will help your setting be the best that it can be for all your children.
Identifying your Vision
The values that you have filter through into everything you do, particularly when all the staff share the same vision about what their early years setting should be like. It is far better to develop an ethos that is shared by all staff, rather than to try to impose one person’s vision on the rest of a staff team. Here are some key questions to help you identify what your vision is:
* What is your vision of the