There is nothing better and more honest than the feedback from children.
I found this very short video from a few years back when The Daily Mile was very new for the nursery.
All posts by Susan Goodman
Parents Twitter feedback – May 2015
A massive thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the twitter questionnaire that went home last week. We really need your feedback to improve our setting and give us ideas about the ways in which to continue to build links between nursery and home, developing our learning community.
The information that you shared with us is giving us a clear message. Twitter is an important tool to use to allow us to share learning between home and nursery and vice versa. It takes no time at all to capture an image (which we are already doing for inclusion in journals), writing 140 characters and posting it online. In fact, it is quite refreshing to have to write a short blurb that includes everything that needs to be said about the images.
We can use Twitter to:-
- showcase learning, giving real life examples of the Curriculum for Excellence in action.
- post a wish list of resources i.e. junk, newspapers etc.
- send out reminders of upcoming events that can be accessed 24/7.
- provide an insight into what is happening in the playroom for all parents whether they drop in everyday, a few times a week.
- enable parents and carers who work away from home or extended family who live far away to share in the life and play of the nursery and have provocations for conversations with their young family.
- enable us to connect with our nursery and school community.
- allow parents to view some learning in real time
- inform followers when this blog is updated.
- post videos of learning and the children’s ideas and theories
- share information
- build an interactive, two way on line community with parents and carers.
- and on, and on, and on……..
We fully understand that Twitter is not for everyone and we respect your decision.
For those who are following us on Twitter and not interacting, why don’t you give it a go. You do not need to post pictures or videos, just a few words to get a dialogue going would be amazing. So go on, give it a go. We can do this together.
Our Twitter feed is the responsibility of Susan so any questions or ideas, please speak to her. The smallest of suggestions will be most welcome.
**Please note**
This is the feedback for the only the nursery and does not include the school forms.
Twitter Questionnaire feedback April 2015
Q.1. Do you follow us on twitter?
Yes: 9 No: 4
Q.2. If you do not use Twitter, would you be interested in accessing Twitter to find out more information about your child’s learning experiences?
If no, please could you tell us why you do not wish to use Twitter?
Yes (go to question 8)
No (questionnaire completed)
• 1 no – Do not use twitter
• 1 yes – I just haven’t got round to using Twitter at all for anything yet. I feel short of time to work it out and I am happy with my child’s nursery experience so I don’t feel it is an urgent thing.
Q.3. Which pages do you follow? (Tick all that apply)
School page: 3
Nursery page: 9
P1D:
P1K:
P2A:1
P5A:1
Q.4. How often do you access the St Ninians Twitter pages?
Daily 5
Every few days 3
Once a week
Once every few weeks 1
Other
Q.5.What do you think are the positives of Twitter?
• Excellent way of discussing nursery learning with child. Encourages them to communicate about their learning. Enjoy seeing all the fun and learning and sharing home experiences, connecting home and school together.
• Getting to see your child in action and finding out what they have been doing. He doesn’t always tell me what’s going on!
• Being able to get an insight into the children’s day at nursery and to see what interesting and fun things they get up to. Also being able to interact with the page.
• Informs parents and keeps them up to date with events, particularly parents who work.
• Regular communication, ease of access, no bits of paper to lose.
• Love seeing the photos and posts about children’s learning
• Get to know what kids are doing at nursery. Let us talk about what they are learning at home.
• Good way of communication and being able to see pictures of what happens during nursery sessions.
• It gives me an idea of some of what has happened in the classroom so we can talk about it at home. The kids can no longer say they did nothing! Also allows the kids to let their class know what they are doing at home.
Q.6. What do you think are the negatives of twitter?
• None
• Privacy
• ?No control of what is said
• None, my daughter is always disappointed when she can’t find her group or herself though!
• Concerns that this is one more thing that teachers have to do that takes them away from teaching. Did like the tweets that were taken, written and tweeted by one of the nursery children – good life learning. I hadn’t realised it wasn’t all of the classes and I think my kids would feel they were missing out if one of them could not tweet next year.
Q.7. Can you think of any ways we could improve Twitter?
• No-keep it up!
• More tweets /photos of what is happening at school during the day.
• No, think it is really good.
• Rolling it out to include all of the classes.
Q.8. Is there anything the school/nursery could do to help parents use Twitter more easily?
• Perhaps an information event to learn about how to use it, tricks about Twitter, security and Twitter etc
• I found the instruction given by the nursery nice and clear.
• Already advertise it and invite parents to use it, rest I believe is up to the parents.
• I have sent a request to the schools twitter page
• Maybe some sort of sessional guide for how to use twitter for parents/carers who have never used it.
Q.9. Any other comments or suggestions?
• Love twitter and the fact the nursery/school use it! Hope all classes use as my child moves up the school.
• Love seeing all the pictures of the children throughout the day. Keep up the good work
• I think it’s a super way to keep parents informed!
Loose parts play… a theory.
Have you ever wondered why we have baskets with glass pebbles, chains, wee bits lying about? This is called loose parts play and it was developed in the 1970’s by an architect called Simon Nicholson who wrote the paper How NOT to Cheat Children The Theory of Loose Parts (1971).
In this journal article, Nicholson described the thinking behind the theory as “In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.”
Basically, the more wee bits we have in the nursery, the higher the level of creativity, theorising , trying out and innovative thinking . I would add to that the level of engagement also rises.
That box and packaging that came with your new item that the children have spent hours playing with? Loose parts
The stones and leaves that are lined up, rearranged, lined up again? Loose parts
Chains that are constantly dropped in and out of the tin can? Loose parts
And on, and on, and on …
Nicholson also describes creativity as “the playing around with the components and variables of the world in order to make experiments and discover new things and form new concepts.” In nursery, this is reflected in the way we are process focused and not product driven. It is absolutely fine NOT to have something to take home at the end of the day. It is also ok for children to work on something the whole morning and then they knock it all down and tidy it away. Finding out what happens when…?, what if I…?, how does that…?, I wonder if…? are all creative thinking processes and the way children make sense of the world through active play and involvement. They have to make mistakes. They have to have space and time to make these mistakes and learn from them. They have to experience and feel the emotion from those mistakes to make it real. When you think back, how difficult is it to recall all the good experiences in our lives? Now flip that and try to recall all the mistakes and bad things that have happened. Probably a whole lot more come to mind because as adults, we remember how hurt/sad/upset/annoyed/disappointed we were at the time. Did you plan to repeat the experience? Probably not because you learned from it. This is what children do through play.
Play is the work of children and as they are apprentice learners in this world, they must be allowed to make mistake after mistake after mistake ( unless its dangerous of course!!) until they understand the consequences of particular actions and inactions. Simply telling them is not useful, they need to experience disappointment so that they can work things out and transfer that learning to other areas of their play.
Although we have multifunctional and plastic construction toys such as lego in nursery, the loose part resources are always the most popular. I remember years ago being at a training day where we had to sit with our eyes closed while the trainer passed round three toys, a plastic duck, a plastic train and a plastic hoopla stack. We all held it for a few minutes and then passed it on, slightly bored. Next she passed round a pumice stone, a natural sponge and a lemon. Still with our eyes closed, we spent a lot longer using our senses to explore and investigate the items, raising lots of conversation and debate about them. The course was facilitated by people who worked with blind children and adults and posed the question about the value of plastic toys… they all felt, smelled, tasted and sounded the same. What play value did that have for children regardless of their abilities? That was over 20 years ago… and it still resonates with me today and my passion for sensory play was born.
So,we are about to raise the level of loose parts play. Nicholson talks about variables. These are materials, shapes, people, plants, sounds, music etc etc… aka wee bits!
Please take a few minutes to watch this youtube clip and see the potential for loose parts play/sensory learning.
We will be posting a wish list soon and hopefully you can help us gather resources.
Thanks!
Video by Nicole Root. http://www.explorationsplaystudio.com.
School website
Content for the blog
As you will have noticed, Twitter seems to have taken over as the primary method of sharing our learning within the nursery. I like it because it’s quick, manageable and gives a snapshot of learning to let parents and families know what their children MIGHT have been involved in on a particular day. (The way nursery education is in the early years, child led/initiated learning is the main driving force behind what we do with the interjection of adult initiated provocations to extend interests and deepen learning and this can explain why your child may or may not have participated in the experience that is being tweeted about.)
The purpose of the blog to write longer posts about what is happening in nursery, share documents, expand on learning experiences and to create an online record of what has been happening in the nursery. It is not just the children who say “nothing much” when questioned about what they did today. Staff provide many experiences for the children, either daily or over a period of time, and it is impossible to remember exactly everything that we are doing.
By using Twitter, the blog and the dry wipe white board in the entrance hall we can triangulate information for everyone. There will always be a place for paper copies of newsletters and notes but using digital media is faster, cheaper and more creative.
So, I am looking for ideas and suggestions to extend the content of the blog.
- What would you like to see/read?
- What kind of writing would you like to see? Jokes, interviews, other blog posts, blog links, links to informative articles about early level education, etc, etc, etc
- Important information regarding transition, holidays, upcoming events?
- Guest posts by parents? You write it, email it to me and I will moderate and publish it? (obviously , for the sake of security, I cannot give out the admin password)
- Children’s learning from home?
The list is endless and I am keen to include some content from parents and children. This will help us build our learning community and support the idea that learning happens everywhere and not just in the nursery or at home. The social media that we use @st_nin_nursery and this blog is only effective if we have consistent content and interaction through tweets, retweets and blog post comments. I am keen for more parents to get involved and be our online community builders, leading by example and encouraging others to join in. It is all good fun although it can be daunting… I hate writing on the staff room white board in case I spell something wrong and it is going to be read by a whole school of teachers!!
What do you think? Are you up for a challenge?
Please leave a comment below or e mail me at gw09morrisonsusan11@glow.sch.uk
Susan
Red Nose day… a quick photo round up.
St Ninians World Safari
The whole school open evening is this Thursday, 26th March from 6.30 – 8.00 pm.
Come along to the school and wander to all the classrooms and nursery to view the tremendous learning that has been happening since January. There will be interactive activities for everyone to have a go at plus the gym hall will be transformed into the Hall of Homework just for one night.
This is a fabulous transition opportunity for the children (and parents) who are going into P1 after the summer to meet other parents and have a look around the school, even though it will be changed slightly come August due to the new school build.
This is always very busy so a babysitter may be an idea for very young children but the choice is yours. The main entrance doors open at 6.30pm but be warned… the queue to get in is always long!
Please note: There is no access via the normal nursery door.
Red Nose day 2015
It is Red Nose day this Friday, 13th march.
The children can come to nursery with mad hair, wearing their clothes back to front or in fancy dress/dressing up and bring a £1 to donate to red nose day.
Thanks
Adding a gallery of learning
Here is our gallery of learning. Luckily we had already made one using picmonkey… we are not speedy quick!
Home Learning Task
All home learning tasks that were set the week before the February break were due in on Friday. If you have not managed to complete yours don’t worry, we will accept them up to the open evening on the 26th March.
I am beginning to mount them on black card and display them on the walls around the nursery and they are looking amazing.
Well Done everyone!
