Online version of the keynote for London Borough of Barking and Dagenham headteachers

1. Dr Julian Grenier
grenier@outlook.com
@juliangrenier
Emphasising
curriculum in the
early years – a step
too far?

2. Today’s
keynote
Have we been here before?
What’s the meaning of ‘curriculum’ when
we’re thinking about young children?
Cognitive load theory – is this relevant to
the early years?
Can we make this work for everyone,
including children facing disadvantage?

3. Today’s
keynote
Have we been here before?
What’s the meaning of ‘curriculum’ when
we’re thinking about young children?
Cognitive load theory – is this relevant to
the early years?
Can we make this work for everyone,
including children facing disadvantage?

4. Curriculum
Guidance for
the
foundation
stage

5. ‘Curriculum planning is not a once-
and-for-all operation: it is a
continuous cycle involving planning,
observing, recording, assessing and
returning to planning in the light of
the intermediate stages.’
The 1990 Rumbold Report on early
education

6. Today’s education news

7. Typical?

8. Typical?

9. Confusion about the
Early Years curriculum?
• Ofsted (2017, p.4):
• ‘two thirds of the staff inspectors spoke to confused
what they were teaching (the curriculum) with how
they thought they were supposed to teach it’.

10. So is there a problem
with Development
Matters?
• Nancy Stewart, one of the authors of
Development Matters, has
commented that the guidance is often
‘used as a tick-list of descriptors of
what children must achieve’ and this
‘can sadly limit both children’s
development and the professional
awareness and skills of practitioners’
(Stewart, 2016).

11. An ineffective approach?
• ‘Many of the teachers devised tasks simply
to tick off elements of the early learning
goals so that they could provide evidence
of children’s achievement. By default,
these tasks – and ticking them off –
became the Reception curriculum, with a
significant loss of focus on learning, step
by step.’
• Ofsted (2017)

12. The impact on staff
• Bradbury (2012, p. 179) vividly brings this to life,
recounting how Jim, a reception teacher, told her
about the ‘pressure to collect evidence at the
beginning of the year: “you’ve got 22 folders down
there with nothing in and it’s like, Christ let’s fill it. You
need stuff in there – we need to show that we’re doing
work”’.

14. Some of the impact of workload

15. Today’s
keynote
Have we been here before?
What’s the meaning of ‘curriculum’ when
we’re thinking about young children?
Cognitive load theory – is this relevant to
the early years?
Can we make this work for everyone,
including children facing disadvantage?

16. What could the EY
curriculum look like?
• ‘Depth, not breadth: deep
understanding is more important than
superficial coverage’.
• ‘Development proceeds in a web of
multiple strands, with different
children following different pathways’.
• Unfortunately, the way the current
framework is (mis)interpreted can be
all about superficial coverage and can
make it seem as if children develop in
an orderly way from one stage to the
next.

17. Development is not simply about
‘readiness’
• ‘Children think and reason largely in
the same way as adults. However,
they lack experience, and they are
still developing important
metacognitve and executive
function skills’
• Usha Goswami, professor of
Cognitive Developmental
Neuroscience at the University of
Cambridge

18. It’s not about ‘readiness’
• What we once assumed to be the limitations of a
child’s ‘stage of development’, we now assume to be
the result of their lack of life experience.
• Children are not deficient in their ways of thinking and
solving problems, but they are inexperienced.
• They are still finding out how to identify which of their
learning strategies are effective, and how to maintain
their attention in order to reach a particular goal.

19. It is about
• Thoughtful design
• Pedagogical repertoire
– play-based learning which helps children’s
developing self-regulation (amongst other
benefits)
– adult-directed, playful learning which
helps children acquire the skills and
knowledge they need to succeed
• Repetition, practice and fluency – and
progress!
• Making children feel special and
giving children time

20. Are staff available for play and conversation?

21. • Siren Films – play and conversation clip

22. Read more

23. Executive function and self-regulation skills
are the mental processes that enable us to plan,
focus attention, remember instructions, and
juggle multiple tasks successfully. Just as an air
traffic control system at a busy airport safely
manages the arrivals and departures of many
aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs
this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks,
set and achieve goals, and control impulses.

24. Today’s
keynote
Have we been here before?
What’s the meaning of ‘curriculum’ when
we’re thinking about young children?
Cognitive load theory – is this relevant to
the early years?
Can we make this work for everyone,
including children facing disadvantage?

25. Cognitive load theory
• Ofsted are proposing that learning can
be defined as changes in long-term
memory.
• Little-research relates to children in
the early years or younger primary
pupils, except with respect to
beginner readers.

26. Long term memory
‘Long-term memory consists of a range of
schemata. These are complex structures that
link knowledge, create meaning and allow skills
to be performed. They are built up over time.’
Professor Daniel Muijs, Ofsted’s head of
research
• Children are not ‘empty buckets’ needing to
be filled up with knowledge.
• It’s more helpful to think of children being
able retrieve things quickly from their long-
term memory
• Once you know some things, it’s easier to
learn more.

27. Helpful examples?
• Learning to drive
• Becoming more fluent at using apps on
your computer
• Learning a new language

28. Short-term memory
• Before information enters long-term memory, it needs
to be processed by the short-term or working memory.
This has limited capacity.’
Professor Daniel Muijs, Ofsted’s head of research

29. 7 – 5 – 1 – 3

30. • Can you remember what you saw?

31. 4 – 7 – 9 – 8 – 8 – 0 – 7 – 3 - 2

32. • Can you remember what you saw?

33. The cat sat on the mat

34. Why?
Is it hard to
remember the
sequence of 9
digits but easy
to remember
the sequence
of 17 letters?

35. Long-term memory consists of a range of schemata. These are complex structures that
link knowledge, create meaning and allow skills to be performed. They are built up over
time.
Learning is about developing those schemata through acquiring knowledge and making
connections with different schemata. However, before information enters long-term
memory, it needs to be processed by the short-term or working memory. This has
limited capacity. It is not able to retain knowledge or develop schemata if it is
overloaded i.e. if we are given too many things to think about at once.
However, CLT is not about minimising cognitive load. It is about not exceeding the
cognitive load that people can deal with. Deep learning requires cognitive load (learning
is hard!), but it must be relevant to the task and help rather than hinder learning.
Professor Daniel Muijs, Ofsted’s head of research

37. Learning about
number
• Moving children on OR helping
children to become fluent?
• ‘First, provide opportunities for
children to practice recognizing
the total number of objects in
small collections (one to three
items) and labeling them with a
number word without needing to
count them.’
• Teaching Math to Young Children

38. Beginner
readers
Teaching reading using
the ‘searchlights’
approach as opposed
to systematic, synthetic
phonics

39. But reading and phonics
aren’t the same thing!
• Systematic teaching of phonics is only part of the
reading curriculum
• Children need times to enjoy books and develop a love
of reading
• Shared book-reading is a powerful way for children to
develop their vocabulary, too
• Beginner readers cannot necessarily explain what they
have just read to you, because their working memory
is being used to capacity

40. • Siren Films – dialogic reading clip

41. Developing a love of books?

42. Small chunks
• ‘This approach suggests teaching activities that do
not need too much working memory capacity
until learners acquire the knowledge that allows
them to spend less time processing content. In
many cases, when we are teaching novices, it will
make sense to teach in small chunks and ensure
that pupils obtain mastery in these before moving
onto the next topic.’
Professor Daniel Muijs, Ofsted’s head of research

43. • Working memory governs our ability to
retain and manipulate distinct pieces of
information over short periods of time.
• Mental flexibility helps us to sustain or shift
attention in response to different demands or
to apply different rules in different settings.
• Self-control enables us to set priorities and
resist impulsive actions or responses.

44. Today’s
keynote
Have we been here before?
What’s the meaning of ‘curriculum’ when
we’re thinking about young children?
Cognitive load theory – is this relevant to
the early years?
Can we make this work for everyone,
including children facing disadvantage?

45. • Children aren’t born with these skills—they
are born with the potential to develop them.
• Growth-promoting environments provide
children with “scaffolding”
• That helps them practise necessary skills before
they must perform them alone. Adults can
facilitate the development of a child’s executive
function skills by establishing routines, modelling
social behaviour, and creating and maintaining
supportive, reliable relationships

46. What needs
to be in the
EYFS
repertoire?
• Playing with children
• Reading and singing
• Helping children to learn new skills through direct teaching
• Planning trips out and bringing exciting and different things in
• Giving children time to practise and rehearse
• Planning for progress