developmentally appropriate next steps

[Guest]

Hi all,

 

How can i support staff to understand whether next steps are developmentally appropriate for their children? some next steps i see are very vague and do not seem challenging enough for the older preschoolers. for example, is it enough to say "next step is to discuss/talk about how people help us" or "reading a story about people who help us".

 

what would be a next step for a child who is observed writing their name?

 

many thanks

salus

[AnonyMouse_49131]

Hi

 

what would be a next step for a child who is observed writing their name?

 

Label their own work and begin to copy labels etc.

[AnonyMouse_19762]

 

 

what would be a next step for a child who is observed writing their name?

 

 

 

For me that would depend on whether or not letters are 'correctly formed'.......

[Guest]

How would you support a child to correctly form letters? We don't do dot to dots or tracing

[AnonyMouse_6008]

For me, that would depend on how they'd formed them in the first place - one little girl brought me her picture that she'd written her name on - I'd not seen her write the letters but she'd written them right to left. I actually thought she'd written her elder sister's name at first glance as her name ends with her sister's initial and she'd used a capital letter there. Probably because it's her sister's initial as the rest of the letters were not capitals.

 

So our next step was to go and look at her name card and see that the letters go left to right on that. She had then lost interest, so we'll follow that next week with sitting with her as she draws and making sure her name card is available to check that we write left to right. And looking to see how she forms the letters - well, that's a next step for me, not for the child!

 

Generally, we support children by encouraging them to be aware of the letter formation as we write their name, make letters in the dry sand or cornflour gloop or with big paint brushes and water on the patio.

[AnonyMouse_7120]

We often find one or two children at this time of year who have been competently writing their name for months suddenly start writing it backwards with capital initial on the right, it's not the left handers either....we then spend last few weeks trying to get them to start on the left again.