The Foundation Stage Forum Community
Welcome to the FSF – a community for early years professionals. Engage in conversations, offer and receive advice and support, make connections. Discover our library of education articles and podcast episodes to enhance your reflective practice. Working together to achieve high-quality early childhood education.
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Development Matters: A landscape of possibilities, not a roadmap
by Nancy Stewart
How many times have you thought that it would be easy to use Development Matters as a 'tick list'? Which managers have had heated meetings with staff who say that 'ticking off' aspects makes it so much easier to plan next steps? I know that here at…
Podcast: How can we support children to live in an ever-changing digital world?
Ben and Jules chatted with Hannah Clifford, founder of Seren Kids, which provides children and adults with digital skills and e-safety knowledge. Hannah shares ideas about how to talk with children about e-safety, how to teach children to have a crea…
Social Entrepreneur, Speech and Language Therapist, adjunct lecturer a…
In this article, Warda explains why developing advocacy skills is important and shares strategies on how to do it effectively.
Latest
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What are you seeing?
What are you seeing? One of the simplest ideas within The Archetype Approach is to create a little more space between what happened and what we decide it means. A child keeps saying no. Another watches from the edge. Someone repeatedly interrupts a game. Someone else wants to organise everybody. Before we decide what that behaviour means, what did we actually see? I thought this could be a place to bring real moments from practice and look at them together. If you have a child, behaviour or interaction that you keep thinking about, share it here and we can explore: what was directly observable; what different interpretations might be possible; what human capacity may be showing itself; whether anything appears to be becoming rigid or out of balance; what the adult, relationships or environment may be contributing; what kind of balancing experience might help. There doesn’t have to be a correct answer. The aim is simply to look again. -
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What are you seeing?
One of the simplest ideas within The Archetype Approach is to create a little more space between what happened and what we decide it means. -
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What is the Archetype Approach?
I first came across Oliver Riddett's posts on Instagram and I was struck with how refreshing his approach is to understanding and supporting children's learning. Based on Jungian Theory (about which I know nothing!) I started to learn about different ways of observing, appreciating, and responding to children's patterns of behaviour, that Oliver's materials were describing. I bought his book- available here: https://www.archetype-approach.co.uk/product-page/the-archetype-approach-paperback and I find myself often referring to it when thinking about and reflecting on children (and adults, if I'm honest). I got in touch with Olli, found out more about the approach, visited his setting in Cornwall and we recorded a podcast for Tapestry, available here: I'm still learning and this will no doubt continue- it's not a quick fix to managing children's behaviour but a gentle, insightful, new way of seeing each child as a whole being. Oliver's own words in the book's first chapter: 'In most educational settings, performance has become the lens through which children are seen and valued. Whether it's through termly assessments, observations written for data purposes, or informal praise for finished work- adults are often trained to evaluate, not witness. But something is lost when we focus on what a child can show rather than how they show up. We lose their rhythm. We lose their intention. We lose the chance to meet them where they truly are. Children are not meant to be assessed for output. They are meant to be understood in process. Learning is not a product-it is a living, relational act.' I'm excited at this new way of supporting children and it hasn't come a moment too soon! The sector, and most of all our youngest children, really need this.
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