What is Most Effective Form of Plenary in Early Years Teaching?

What is the most effective form of a plenary in Early Years teaching?

Holly Swain, EYFS Leader and English Coordinator, Monks Risborough Primary School

Jean Piaget’s work on child development separated cognitive development into age related bands: Age

Stage

Birth - 18 months

Sensorimotor

18 months – 6 years

Pre-operational

6 years – 12 years

Concrete Operational

12 years and older

Formal Operational

Introduction Plenaries at the end of a lesson, or throughout, give the learner a chance to reflect upon their learning so far. Ofsted deem them to be an essential part of the learning process and research has shown that if new information is revisited within an hour, retention is stronger (Making Good Use of the Plenary, DfES, 2002).

Plenaries also give the teacher an opportunity to assess the children, correct any misconceptions and be informed as to next step planning.

Although the importance of a plenary is widely known, it is still the part of the learning session that is often dropped, perhaps due to time constraints, or skipped due to lack of inspiration as to how best to implement the device. Early Years teaching sessions often miss the plenary opportunity due to the short attention spans of their cohort. If we subscribe to the idea that a child’s attention span in minutes is its age +/- one minute, then we could be teaching within a very small window ranging from three to six minutes maximum. With this in mind, what is the best form of a plenary for Early Years teaching?

Research ‘Children learn best when they are actually doing the work themselves and creating their own understanding of what’s going on, instead of being given explanations by adults’ (Carol Garhart Mooney, Theories of Childhood, St.Paul, MN: Redleaf, 2000).

This idea compliments Jean Piaget’s theory that ‘Construction is superior to instruction’ (Joanne Hendrick, The Whole Child, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill, 1992), so should an Early Years plenary be more ‘hands on’ than to simply take the form of an explanation?

Behaviours -Learn through senses -Learn through reflexes -Manipulate materials -Form ideas based upon their perceptions -Can only focus on one variable at a time -Overgeneralise based on limited experience -Form ideas based on reasoning -Limit thinking to objects and familiar events -Think conceptually -Think hypothetically

Early Years children working within the pre-operational stage will find it difficult to maintain focus on anything abstract or unrelated to their own experiences.

Children of this age are in the ‘Egocentric stage’. Specifically it has been postulated that, Children are egocentric (think of everything only as it relates to them), can only focus on one characteristic of a thing or person at a time, gather information from what they experience rather than from what they are told, and over generalise from their experiences.

(Theories of Childhood, p.69, 2000.)

Considering all these factors, can a plenary be devised that allows the child to relate the learning to themselves and also build upon their experiences?

I have trialled two different forms of a plenary in a school Reception class with children aged four to five years old, across a range of subjects. Alongside this, I also collected data for a more traditional form of plenary involving interactive whiteboard pictures, key words and teacher led talk (Plenary A).

The first type of plenary is based upon ‘mobile learning’ involving technology.

The children take digital photographs of their learning during the main activity and then explain to the group afterwards (Plenary B).

The second type of plenary is based upon role-play.

The children recap their learning at the end of the session by acting out what they have learnt (Plenary C).

The children were matched for ability and then split into three mixed ability plenary groups.

In all of the cases, the teacher would feed in key vocabulary and information linked to the current area being showcased by the children.

The children’s retention of knowledge was assessed using an informal verbal quiz, eg, Adult: Can you tell me what this is?

(Pointing to a castle feature in a photograph)

Child: It’s a drawbridge!

The results were measured on a scale of retention across three time points: 1 hour, 1 day and 1 week after learning.

1

2

No recall of facts

Little recall

Findings

3 Some recall of facts

4 Good recall

5 Total recall of facts

The results show that both child-centred plenaries were more effective than a teacher-led plenary to secure new knowledge, in an Early Years classroom.

Mobile learning was overall the most successful. It also highlighted the fact that retention of new knowledge after a more traditional type of plenary for young children can be as little as 45%.

The knowledge retention with the trial plenaries was also secure enough for the children to then apply this new learning to their play, showing a deeper, more embedded understanding. These findings could inform how we approach evaluating learning with younger children across our school.

From observing the children during the study, it appeared that, because the children knew they had the responsibility of reporting back to others after their main learning session, they were more engaged in the learning and took ownership over what the important features were. The process of teaching others also actively reinforced their knowledge.

This study could possibly help us as a school to further embed technology and encourage us as a teaching team to give more ownership over the learning to the children within the classroom. As a side effect of the different plenary trials, the communication and language abilities of the children in the trials have risen considerably. Some of the children have even moved on two or more development steps in just five weeks.

Recommendations  Continue to use mobile learning as a plenary in Reception Class and trial the concept in KS1.  Consider the benefits of mobile learning for certain subjects, perhaps Science, in KS2.