Unit 065 Essay

Understanding the EYFS is essential as my observations and reports about children have to be accurate and objective to avoid bias and show a full ‘map’ of child’s development in all the different areas. I have to make sure that my observations are always a true record of what is taking place (e.g. tempting to add something what may make more

Physical development is physical movements of all areas of the body. This may include fine motor skills, gross motor skills and hand eye co-ordination. Fine motor skills may be for e.g. threading a bead on to a piece of string, gross motor skills are for e.g. star jumps and hand eye co-ordination is for e.g. throwing a ball and catching it. These activities can be done indoors and outdoors.

As an early year practitioner, it is very important to support the child development and confidence, help them learn about how to manage their feelings and behaviour and making relationship with others.

The purpose of the EYFS is to ensure that all children have access to quality early years education. To measure this and to ensure practitioners have a focus for their work a series of outcomes is given for each area of learning, these are the early learning goals.

1. Setting the standards for the learning, development and care, ensuring that every child makes progress and that no child gets left behind. Parents, providers should deliver individualised learning, development and care that enhances the development of the children in their care and gives those children the best possible start in life. Every child should be supported individually to make progress at their own pace and children who need extra support to fulfil their potential should receive special consideration. All providers have an equally important role to play in children’s early years experiences and they have to ensure that the provision they deliver is both appropriate to children’ needs and complementary to the education and care provided in child’s other settings.

The main goals of EYFS are to allow all those who work in the Early Years to comply with the ECM policy and to provide 1st year primary education teachers with information regarding their progress prior to their entering the primary system. The statutory framework for EYFS states that 'Ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning and development process' (Statutory Framework for EYFS – DCSF, 2008, p.16). The assessment process is one of the key attributes of the EYFS and is used to determine strengths and weaknesses that children may have in their learning and therefore to plan appropriate activities that will encourage them to achieve learning goals. The culmination of this assessment-feedback process is the EYFS Profile that is generated for each child at the end of their pre-school period.

The Practice Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage sets out detailed formative assessment suggestions. It recommends that all practitioners should:

The EYFS focuses on three particular prime areas of learning and they consist of Communication and Language, Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Physical development. Each

The Foundation Phase Framework is for children from the age of 3-7 year old in Wales. The Foundation Phase begins by observing the child to find out what they already know and then building up their sense of knowledge for their age. They also encourage children to be independent learner and not to be dependent on adults in the setting. The EYFS build a child’s self-esteem and confidence by them succeeding in any tasks they are set. By making it something the children enjoy makes them more engaged in what is going on and it makes them want to participate more.

I have had previous educational programming experience for over ten years. Depending on the childcare service, the programs have varied which enabled them to service the children, families and communities. With the programs, I have concentrated on the documentation that supports the quality outcomes. I have utilised the principles and practices from frameworks such as the Early Years Learning Frameworks (EYLF), to implement and plan the program. When I undertake the programs, the key issues are capturing children’s voices and ideas in planning documentation and evaluation. Gathering and analysing information about children such as their knowledge, abilities and understanding is part of the ongoing cycle in planning documentation and evaluating

Practitioner use the planning cycle in order to be able to prepare appropriate activities that help and support the children’s learning. The information from the cycle can then be shared with parents “the EYFS requires early years practitioners to review children’s progress and share a summary with parents at two points” (Early Education, 2012) The planning cycle has four stages; observe plan do review. Observation of the child is done first to see what level they are performing at. Thee practitioner will then plan an activity for the child to do which will help them develop further. After the planning has been implemented the practitioner will review what has happened to see if the activity can be improved. Once review has been made the practitioner

A significant factor that divides the approach the most is the role of assessment/ documentation. Equally, both approaches emphasis the need for documentation of children work. They carefully displaying and documenting children’s thoughts and progression of thinking; making their thoughts visible in many different ways. Nevertheless, assessment is only a requirement in the EYFS with the exception for children to meet their level of development. The EYFS work on a system of observation, assessment and planning. Due to, the practice guidance for the EYFS which states ‘All effective assessment involves analysing and reviewing what you know about each child’s development and learning.. and to plan

The Foundation Phase of the curriculum is the curriculum which has been set for children between the ages of 3 and 7. It has been based around the creativity and imagination of the child to help with meeting developmental needs of the child. In 2008 the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) decided to bring together the Early Years curriculum with the 5-7 years curriculum, which created the Framework for Children’s Learning for 3 to 7-year olds in Wales (The Framework). The Framework clearly states what all children should be taught and what outcomes should be expected from the children. The Framework also outlines the curriculum for the 7 areas of learning. “The 7 areas of learning are:

It is important for practitioners to identify children’s care and learning needs in a setting, there are many reasons for this. Firstly, is to promote development. Some children develop and learn faster than others and it is partly our responsibility to ensure all children’s needs are cared for no matter what stage of development they are at. We can do this by carrying out observations; these help us to identify the exact learning needs of children. They can show us clearly what stage of development each individual child is at, we would compare each child against milestones for that age and stage of development and then we can begin to plan to meet the learning needs of certain children who are not meeting milestones and also

What exactly are the domains of development? Human development is comprised of three major domains: physical development, cognitive development, and social-emotional development. Physical development is “biological changes that occur in the body and brain, including changes in size and strength and integration of sensory and motor activities” (Levine and Munsch). This also refers to children’s fine and gross motor skills. According to Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence, there are two basic forms of motor skills. There are gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are “skills that involve the large muscles groups of the body–for example, the legs