Laser Lessons - Lesson

Be able to practice as a reflective Early Years Practitioner

This video, produced by Teachers TV contains a 30-minute video showing how a childcare practitioner works to improve her own practice. Watch the video and make notes. Pay attention to Salma’s own evaluation of her strengths and weaknesses and the comments made by her headteacher. Is there anything that you can relate to your setting? What can you learn from watching the video?

Table of Contents

Presentation

Click to launch this lesson’s first presentation ‘How to conduct a skills gap analysis’.
Click to launch this lesson's second presentation on ‘Personal performance and development’.

Think And Challenge

Think about a time when you have been asked to prepare and carry out an outdoor art activity with a group of young children of mixed abilities. Two children in the group have English as an Additional Language, one child has a moderate visual impairment, and one child has a club foot (talipes). Either in a discussion or in writing, explain the process from start to finish.
1. How did you plan?
2. What did you do?
3. Did it go according to your plan?
4. Did the children enjoy it?
5. How did you end the session?

Once have explained this, think about (often we use the term ‘reflect on’) how the activity or planning for it could have been improved.

Maybe you had too many children at a time
Maybe you didn’t make the activity as inclusion as you could have
Maybe some of the children enjoyed it more than others
Maybe you had not thought about how to calmly and appropriately end the session
Maybe you had not thought about how to clean up the space in the time you had available ready for the next activity to take place?

It is rare that there is just one way to respond to a scenario or situation, so do not consider that the responses you have to the above scenario will be judged as right or wrong. Share your scenario with a work colleague or friend and ask them to tell you whether they think you have responded appropriately. Ask them to challenge your response if necessary. You do not need to submit this task for assessment unless asked to do so by your assessor.