Sustained Shared Thinking & Emergent Math in Early Childhood

This report explores the significance of valuing individual interests in supporting children's emergent mathematical development within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum. It highlights how observation and interaction with parents can reveal children's interests, enabling educators to plan engaging and effective activities. By fostering a positive attitude towards mathematics and encouraging curiosity, educators can enhance children's analytical and problem-solving skills. The report also discusses the role of sustained shared thinking, emphasizing how early years practitioners can create opportunities for deep conversations, open-ended questions, and reflective learning to support children's emergent mathematical development. Effective strategies include planning activities that promote interaction, managing staff to maximize engagement, and utilizing verbal interactions to develop thinking skills and language.

4.2. Emergent mathematics can be defined as a term which describes how children develop
mathematics from birth and continuing them throughout their life through interaction and
cognitive development.
It is very important to value individual interest while supporting emergent mathematical
development as its not only a good practice but its also a requirement of EYFS (Early Years
Foundation Stage Curriculum). Observation is a way to find out children’s interest as by
observing them, one can find out the activities which interests them. Also, by observing it
helps to understand what they are already enjoying and which activities helps them to
concentrate. Their interest can also be known by interacting with their parents. Once the
children’s interest is known it helps the educator to plan more effectively as he can plan
activities which he knows the children will participate in and enjoy. It is important to
organise different activities to understand the behaviour and learning capacity of each
children. This will make the educator to understand the strength and weakness of each
children & planning the activities accordingly.
Planning activities which interests children also means they will be more focussed and will
learn things. This will also help to establish a good relationship and rapport between the
educator and children which is vital for the development. This kind of learning helps to boost
children enthusiasm to learn new things. This also makes children more open to share their
thoughts and curiosity.
Mostly children face problems to understand concepts of mathematics. It is important to
develop skills in numeracy, children need to engage themselves in trial and error process. But
as they hate to fail, they can be unwilling to involve themselves in such process. It is very
important to develop a positive attitude towards maths subject. Due to this reason only, the
Early years foundation stage curriculum included to value individual interest. The children
want to know that their practitioner is interested in their ideas, thinking, value their ideas,
sensitive to their feelings so they can express themselves freely and which in turn helps them
to boost their confidence. Once the children enjoy to learn things, they become more curious.
Curiosity further strengthen the relationship with the educator which makes them more
interactive. This further enhances their analytical & evaluating skills. Thus, it is evident that
valuing individual’s interest is vital in the overall development of child analytical and
problem solving skills.
4.3. According to the research conducted by Sylva in 2004 on “Effective Thinking”
benefitted every child in all types of setting. Sustained shared thinking was considered to be
one of the good quality settings and it still continues to remain highly desirable which can be
proved by its inclusion in Early Years Teacher Status Standard. It occurs when more than one
people work together to clarify the concept, solve a problem, evaluate an activity in an
intellectual way. On early years foundation stage sustained shared thinking is included in
CofEL (Characteristics of Effective Learning) and development in Early years foundation
stage. It is the method by which children learn to develop skills like analytical and problem-
solving skills. The characteristics of CofEL includes active learning, playing and explaining
and creating and thinking critically as it on reasoning and thinking skills, making links
between ideas and applying strategies to solve problems. The early years practitioner acts as a

medium for sustained shared thinking to support children’s emergent mathematical
development. They develop it in the following ways:
 They engage children in deep conversation on what they are doing, by asking open-
ended to motivate their thinking and lastly by supporting them to reflect on and
examine the success rate.
 Planning the daily activities in a way to ensure that there is enough time in which the
children and educator get deeply involved in learning and discussions and learning.
 Managing roster and staff shift in a way to ensure that maximum number of staff are
available to interact with the children instead of doing other works.
 The educator must be aware about the importance of conversational interactions so
that they are interested to initiate and engage in them. The practitioner most has
specific skills and strategies to ask open ended questions in order to expand children’s
thinking.
 They engage children in verbal interactions to develop children’s thinking skills and
language.
 They plan relevant and appropriate experiences and recognize when to support
spontaneous learning of children as it increases the opportunities for quality
interaction.