Listening to children
- Let’s Listen resource - support for listening to children from the YCVN
- Listen with Lucy - training for practitioners
- Early Years Participation Toolkit 2010 - free listening resource from Hertfordshire County Council
- Children's listening - tips for practitioners
- Let's listen - the NCB's listening campaign
- Listen and Play - audio resource
- Listening as a way of life - leaflets from NCB
- Listening to Young Children - resource for practitioners
- Spaces to play - listening to children's views on their outdoor environment
Let's Listen
Young Children’s Voices Network (YCVN) has created a resource called Let’s Listen which is designed to support the development of a listening culture in early years settings. The resource is designed for practitioners and uses the themes and principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage and the YCVN listening cycle.
The resource can be used by local authorities and Children’s Trust boards to map the participation of young children in children’s services. It is also mapped against Hear by Right participation standards.
For more information about the resource or to obtain a copy of it please see the Participation Works website.
Listen with Lucy: training for early years practitioners
Sharon Garforth explains Listen with Lucy, a training programme for early years practitioners in Shropshire that is impacting on attention and listening skills in children under four.
I developed the Attention and Listening in the Early Years programme, or "Listen with Lucy" as it is known locally in Shropshire, having heard concerns from teachers and heads of local schools that an increasing number of children were entering their reception classes without adequate attention, listening and language skills for accessing the National Curriculum.
Listen with Lucy ("Lucy" the lop-eared rabbit) is designed to be run as an alternative to the traditional circle-time group. It includes a story in the form of a theme such as The Farm or A Day at Home, and rhymes and songs, all of which are excellent attention and listening activities in their own right. However, in a Listen with Lucy group, the children are taken beyond the stage at which these commonly used circle-time activities are sufficient to stretch their skills, and carefully devised adjustments are made to the songs as well as listening activities and games.
The group uses the same general format for each session, therefore taking advantage of routine, repetition and familiarity to aid the children’s learning. Within that format the group leader presents many of the activities we are so familiar with, aimed at teaching the children the basics of good listening, such as to "look at who is talking", "think about the words", "be quiet", and "sit still". The early years practitioner has often not come across this idea of breaking the skill of listening down into these constituent parts. However, during their training they soon take the new ideas on board, and learn to promote them during the group and generally in the classroom. The result is a significant effect on the early years practitioner’s ability to gain the attention of their class and of individuals, and therefore their ability to nurture the development of the children’s skills in listening and concentrating. Of course, if the early years practitioners are supporting the children’s attention skills, they are also developing a strong foundation for all areas of learning for that child, including learning to communicate.
Speech and language therapists whom I have trained to run Listen with Lucy have fed back that the programme is both effective and enjoyable to run. Some of these therapists have gone on to train early years settings themselves, and one introduced Listen with Lucy into a language group at a Child Development Centre.
The popularity of the programme has prompted the publication of Attention and Listening in the Early Years (Garforth, 2009) available from Jessica Kingsley Publications.
Sharon Garforth is a speech and language therapist seconded by the Telford and Wrekin Primary Care Trust to Shropshire Council Sure Start Children’s Centre Services. Please email sgarforth@live.co.uk if you are interested in the training.
Early Years Participation Toolkit 2010
Hertfordshire County Council, a local authority praised for its work on improving participation in early years settings and listening to children, has produced a free toolkit demonstrating how to listen to children.
The resource was developed by Dawn Burley, Participation Officer for the under-fives, who was mentored by Y. Penny Lancaster, author of Listening to Young Children. Ms Lancaster described how "Dawn has taken listening to children further than I ever did. The finished article is not just a toolkit, because it looks at the principles and the methodology around participation...I think the toolkit would be useful for any local authority or early years setting."
The toolkit includes information on research relating to early years participation, simple guidance and participation planning and assessment materials. It aims to show how participation is embedded within documents that inform early years practice.
The toolkit can be downloaded for free from Hertfordshire County Council.
Let's listen
This joint campaign from the National Children's Bureau and Participation Works was launched in April 2010. The campaign:
- is designed for practitioners to use in settings
- uses the themes and principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage and the YCVN Listening Cycle
- is designed for local authorities and Children's Trust boards to use in mapping participation of young children in children's services
- is mapped against Hear by Right participation standards
The resource is available to download from the YCVN webpages.
Listen and Play
Listen and Play is a 28-part audio resource produced by the BBC for preschool children to aid the development of early literacy skills. Each radio programme includes familiar songs, rhymes, stories and sound discrimination games to develop children's phonological awareness and confidence with spoken language. Visit the BBC website.
Listening as a way of life
This is a series of six leaflets published by the NCB on listening to young children, with details of research, practice and methods. They include references to the Childcare Act 2006 and the EYFS. For more information and to download the leaflets visit NCB.
Update
Developing a listening culture, the first leaflet in the second set of Listening as a way of Life leaflets, was launched by the NCB in April 2009. This leaflet provides inspiration and guidance on developing good practice in listening to young children, so that young children's views may inform policy and improve early childhood services. It is free to download from NCB.
Listening to Young Children
A comprehensive resource produced by Coram Family to support practitioners' understanding of what it means to include the voices of young children, and to respond to what young children have to say. The pack contains an introductory guide, a reader, a practitioner handbook, and 11 individual case study booklets. There is also a CD-Rom which includes audiovisual material to illustrate the case studies. Published by Open University Press/McGraw Hill Education (2003). Cost £125. Website: McGraw Hill Education.
Spaces to play
Written by Alison Clark and Peter Moss, Spaces to play explores how to listen to young children's views and experiences of their outdoor environment, in order to inform change. To order visit NCB Books.
