Reception Age Continuous Provision: Benefits and Challenges Report

This report delves into the concept of continuous provision in reception-age education, emphasizing its role in fostering children's independence and learning abilities. It evaluates the benefits and challenges associated with this approach, drawing on various sources to analyze its impact on early childhood development. The report highlights the importance of continuous provision in enhancing literacy, language, numeracy, and ICT skills, and discusses ways practitioners can create an environment that encourages children to explore new ideas and make independent choices. It explores the role of educators in supporting children's interaction with their surroundings, planning curriculum activities, and incorporating different learning methods. Furthermore, the report addresses the importance of assessment and the need for educators to consider individual learning styles and interests while planning for continuous provision, including the use of resources and the need to balance implicit and explicit challenges.

Benefits & Challenges of
Continuous Provision Reception -
Age

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................1
Literature Review...................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Continuous provisions in education, refers to be a key for supporting learners to explore
new ideas and experience, for own development and independence (Flewitt, Messer and
Kucirkova, 2015). It will strengthen the main base of learning abilities of children that help them
to become a good learner in future. Moreover, it also allows to enhance the scope and
opportunities for children in the future in terms of learning appropriate subjects and acquire
better information through continuous provision. The present assignment mainly entails this
concept to develop an environment under which children get freedom, to become an independent
choice maker. For this purpose, a number of sources are evaluated to critically analyse benefits
as well as challenges, raised during Continuous Provision at reception age. Furthermore, how
continuous provision will help practitioners to increase basic learning skills of children is also
explained under this report.
Main Body
In order to enable the learners to take own decisions for completing an assignment or any
task more appropriately, it becomes highly essential for education providers to concern on the
concept of continuous provisions (Kelchen and Goldrick-Rab, 2015). This would help them in
increasing own learning abilities and providing more contribution in group-related activities,
grabbing new knowledge by searching in own specific manner, etc. But before applying the
concept of continuous provisions at early age of children, tutors must need to concern on benefits
as well as challenges that they can face while developing such environment for them (Gehris,
Gooze and Whitaker, 2015). As education is essential for every person to gain success in life,
therefore, at an early stage of learning, by providing children proper environment and ambience,
practitioners can help them to learn basic but most essential skills – literacy, language, numeracy
and ICT (Information & Communication Technology).
Research Aim: “To identify the benefits and challenges faced by educators during continuous
provisions at reception age”.
Research question:
 To determine the importance of continuous provisions at an early age of education.
 To identify the benefits and challenges of continuous provisions at reception age.
 To determine ways by which continuous provisions can be provided to learners.
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Literature Review
Importance of continuous provisions:
According to the viewpoint of Melanie Moore, it has been evaluated that continuous
provisions consider as most important procedure, to support children for development at early
age (The importance of continuous provision in the early years, 2017). Since during early age,
children face many difficulties to understand a thing and adjust themselves in newly environment
of educational institutions (Wong and Rao, 2015). So, by identifying their needs and provide
them such kind of environment where they can explore new ideas, will help them in becoming
more independent. In addition to this, it would also increase the level of creativity and innovation
which is very important for them to secure a considerable and consistent future growth for
themselves as well as their future academic and professional life. For this purpose, practitioners
need to concern on four main cornerstone of learning – engage, develop, innovate and express,
while planning the curriculum which is carefully designed to practice the necessary skills for
development of Early Learning Goals within children (Andronikos and et. al. 2016). This will
develop effective learning characteristics like Active learning, Playing & Exploring, Creating &
Thinking critically, etc. under children at early age of education. In continuous provision, adults
and practitioners play main role in supporting the learners to interact with their surroundings.
This is effectively achieved through them by providing a high-quality and friendly environment
(O'Connor, 2016). One of the most important things that a practitioner can do is to play with
children so that specific needs of them to understand a thing can be evaluated. This would also
help in improving language and ideas of children as well as strengthen the bond of practitioners
with them, that lead to adopt more appropriate pedagogical style of teaching (Elango and et. al.,
2015). In addition, playing would allow the children to express themselves appropriately to
practitioners through which, they would be able to be enhance their learning process and would
be able to acquire and assess crucial informations appropriately. By understanding concept of
continuous provision, teachers can provide more opportunity to children to ask questions and
provide own suggestions, that extend learning abilities of them as well. Along with this, offering
an environment at institute where children give opportunity to freely interact and make
communication with surrounding people of high age or same age, can make them able to highly
increase learning abilities (Darling-Hammond, 2015).
Ways for providing continuous provisions:
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As per the views of (Buckingham, 2017), it has evaluated that if practitioners really want
to make children more creative, innovative and to purse interests of them, then they must highly
concern on environment must be plentiful (Top 5 tips for managing enhanced provisions in
EYFS, 2016). For this purpose, a proper ambience need to be set up like colourful rooms, a
number of resources for playing like Ladybird Spots, Compare, Toy Shop Money, Shapes Shoot
and so on, will help in getting proper engagement of kids in educational games that will enhance
their high learning skills (Isaacs, 2018). Along with this, planning some curriculum activities like
visit an interactive museum, play football in local garden, build an indoor tent, no-bake recipe
etc. will explore their learning characteristics. There are many ways for providing or increasing
learning skills in children, where to develop the self-learning habit in them it is necessary to
implement an effective and enhanced way of continuous provisions (Abbott and et. al., 2017).
Some of these ways are explained below for providing continuous provisions.
Planning and preparing- it is necessary to remain flexible in planning to properly deal
with the children and to handle their behaviour (Morgan and et. al., 2016). Reaction and learning
capacity of each children varies from each other, thus planning for continuous provision should
be broad, varied and should have wide scope and open possibilities for changes. Moreover, each
child grasp different information in a unique manner and thus, it becomes highly essential for
practitioners to plan and prepare different learning methods, techniques and exercises which
could suit a variety of children at once.
Cues and clues – the best way of teaching anything to children is through playing.
Teachers must try to play more interactive and learning games with children to develop habit of
learning in them from staring age (Kelchen and Goldrick-Rab, 2015). These games may include
providing clue regarding something to develop feeling of curiosity in children for learning. With
provision of clues and cues, children tend to learn more effectively and it helps in improving
their analytical skills, which includes assessing the cue and acting accordingly. Another way
through which it serves the purpose is that with playing such games with children, practitioners
must pay attention in enhancing their decision making skills. This is because it is very important
for children to learn these skills at an early age, which reflects on their success later.
Use and reuse – practitioner should try to develop creativity in children through making
them more attentive towards ways of reusing (Soomro & et. al., 2016). This habit of reusing
things in children helps in reducing wastage of resources and children will also become able to
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understand the important of valuable things as well as how different things can be reused and put
to different uses through applying creativity. Teachers could use several methods, such as using
cardboard boxes for different purposes other than storing, which enhances the ability of children
to reflect upon the same and seek distinct uses for things around them, and increase the utility of
each resource appropriately.
Habit of initiative- children should have the habit of taking initiative so that they can
become independent in future (Wong and Rao, 2015). It is the responsibility of practitioner to
make children curious about new thing and also allow them to develop some ideas and creativity.
Children should a get a free environment in which they are allowed to show their creativity and
better idea. Practitioners must provide children with environment, which is full of activities like
painting, colouring and playing with clay, which would bring in their innovative side out front
and provide them with appropriate opportunities that are related to enhancing their creativity for
performing several different activity.
Thus, it has been analysed that planning for continuous provisions should be linked to
assessment, in order to evaluate the ability of children to grab knowledge by surroundings. For
this purpose, tutors are also needed to incorporate four main cornerstones with curriculum
activities (Andronikos & et. al. 2016). It includes ICT (Information and Communication
Technology), numeracy, language and literacy, where by involving all these concepts in setting
teaching practices will help in developing the basic but more effective learning abilities. For
example – During playing with games such as Ladybird Spots, Shapes Shoot and more,
practitioners can support kids to get knowledge of numeracy, which is considered as an
important part of learning in the early years of them (Black, 2016). This will also help children in
problem solving, measuring, understanding of different shapes of geometrical figures. Similarly,
teaching via e-learning styles like Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and more, will aid
practitioners to provide knowledge of digital technologies to kids, for increasing their
technological skills. Moreover, by making group discussion with students at reception age in a
plentiful environment, will help in improving language and communication abilities of them as
well (Gibb & et. al., 2015). In addition to this, for further setting the continuous provision, it is
also essential for including the concept of literacy, via reading and writing basic words at initial
stage of education.
Benefits and challenges of continuous provisions at reception age:
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As per opinion of Sue Rogers and Janet Rose, it has been analysed that as continuous
provision is essential for developing and strengthening the basic learning skills of children at
their early age, but it provides both benefits and challenges also (Continuous provision: from
Early Years to Year 6, 2018). For example – Continuous Provision needs to be linked with
assessment as well as levelled with children’s ability in education. So, practitioners would need
to enhance it with plentiful environment and open ended resources, which will encourage them
to explore new ideas and turn their creative skills into making a thing (Darling-Hammond, 2015).
Hereby, when education providers include best practices in their teaching and curriculum
activities, then they will get more engagement of children in increasing their creative skills. Early
age of education is known as one of the most crucial and important stage of every children life as
this is the only stage in which he/she learn about various things. Teachers play an essential role
in this stage and it is very essential for all teachers to create and provide a friendly environment
to every student so they can learn things in better manner and remind them for long time period.
when teachers help students to learn about various things in an easy manner then this offer long
term benefits to students. proper monitoring of student's learning should be done at this stage as
this increase effective learning process and also help teachers in identify the best approach to
offer teaching to different kind of students. But there may arise a number of challenges also in
overall areas of Continuous Provision like to assess different-different needs and level of interest
of each kids, because every child has unique learning styles (Isaacs, 2018). This may be
classified as implicit challenge and explicit challenge. Here, implicit challenge will come from
the fact that have linked with a number of resources to assessment and levelled. While explicit
challenge includes conditions where children will have a direct request to complete a specific
challenge within an area alongside their free play. Along with this, adopting different styles of
pedagogies and provide education as per interest level of children seems to be much difficult for
practitioners. Therefore, for this purpose and to deal with number of challenges while planning
continuous provision, teachers required to develop curriculum activities and provide supportive
environment.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from this assignment that continuous provision help education
providers in providing better ambiance and plentiful environment to children, at early age. This
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would also help in making children able to increase their basic skills of learning and
understanding the surroundings.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Andronikos, G. & et. al. (2016). Relative age effect: implications for effective practice. Journal
of sports sciences. 34(12). 1124-1131.
Buckingham, C. (2017). Education. In HLM50+ Towards a Social Architecture (pp. 226-253).
Routledge.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). The flat world and education: How America's commitment to
equity will determine our future. Teachers College Press.
Elango, S., & et. al. (2015). Early childhood education. In Economics of Means-Tested Transfer
Programs in the United States, Volume 2 (pp. 235-297). University of Chicago Press.
Flewitt, R., Messer, D., & Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital
age: The iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. 15(3). 289-310.
Gehris, J. S., Gooze, R. A., & Whitaker, R. C. (2015). Teachers' perceptions about children's
movement and learning in early childhood education programmes. Child: care, health
and development. 41(1). 122-131.
Isaacs, B. (2018). Understanding the Montessori approach: Early years education in practice.
Routledge.
Kelchen, R., & Goldrick-Rab, S. (2015). Accelerating college knowledge: A fiscal analysis of a
targeted early commitment Pell Grant program. The Journal of Higher Education. 86(2).
199-232.
O'Connor, D. J. (2016). An introduction to the philosophy of education. Routledge.
Wong, J. M., & Rao, N. (2015). The evolution of early childhood education policy in Hong
Kong. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy. 9(1). 3.
Online
The importance of continuous provision in the early years. 2017. [Online] Available Through:
<https://cornerstoneseducation.co.uk/continuous-provision-early-years/>.
Continuous provision: from Early Years to Year 6. 2018. [Online] Available
Through:<https://resource-bank.scholastic.co.uk/content/Continuous-provision-from-
Early-Years-to-Year-6-36254>.
Top 5 tips for managing enhanced provisions in EYFS. 2016. [Online] Available
Through:<https://cornerstoneseducation.co.uk/top-5-tips-managing-enhanced-provision-
eyfs/>
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