Supporting, Deepening and Extending Learning
Continued practice of the same skill in multiple situations is required to achieve proficiency, mastery, and automaticity. Children need to be given opportunities to revisit and practice what they have been learning.
At Early Level:
- Practitioners must have a deep, holistic knowledge of the child as individuals through sensitive interactions, observations and personal plans.
- The practitioners must create a rich variety of opportunities for children to experiment, play, and use their skills and knowledge in different contexts to become masters.
- Practitioners must support the children in connecting prior knowledge to their current learning, building new understanding, and correcting misconceptions.
- Practitioners sensitively interact with children to understand how they move their learning forward, addressing misconceptions, answering questions, supporting metacognition, and deepening understanding.
“The defining feature of being a young active learner is the need to widen experiences and learning in all areas of development. The important role for the practitioner is to determine what the young child could learn through their own interests, balanced with learning across the areas of the curriculum. Supporting this in a quality learning environment with high-quality interactions will enable the young child to support and extend their learning, deepen thinking and make progress”.
(Realising the Ambition, Education Scotland, 2020, p. 21)
