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Dissertation Realness

Rather than sashay away, I’ll be more Shantay, you stay (Drag Race reference for you there folks!)

Now I’m about to start the final year of a degree I’ve got the mammoth (read gargantuan) task of choosing and then writing my dissertation. I roughly know my topic but will need to tidy it up to submit my proposal.

What’s that? You want to know what it is?

Oh, well ok! I’m looking at physical literacy in children and how we should focus on that to improve the children’s abilities for writing later.

As I said it is very much in the embryonic stage of development but I’m wondering if my lovely TMP Tribe can help me with useful reading, guidance, research or resources?

If you can then feel free to message me on my social media channels or drop me an email to hello@themalepractitioner.com as it would certainly help.

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Fine Motor Threading

I was having a wander round Home Sense today and saw this pasta on the shelf. I think this would be amazing for threading, working on fine motor control and hand/eye co-ordination.

A bargain at £2.49 as well!

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What I think Cultural Capital is.

This is my view on what Cultural Capital means for early years settings.

As I said, this is my view. You may have your own interpretation.

Whatever your view on Cultural Capital, just remember to feed those curious minds!

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Is this true or not?

After my last post I thought I’d open up another line of debate amongst us Early Years Practitioners and Professionals.

One of my colleagues showed me this article from a recent edition of The Times which has heard from a Senior Church of Scotland Cleric who states that children now are totally unable to accept failure because parents and society has taken away the concept of losing and has “coddled” them. Do you think this is true?

Coddled Children
Copyright The Times Newspapers

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Thought for the day.

And a worrying thought it is.

In Scotland there is a motion to bring in assessment of primary 1 children to test them on literacy and numeracy. Although any primary teacher will tell you that assessment is ongoing and done through observations the Scottish Government, in their wisdom, have decided this isn’t enough and want this test brought in.

Apart from the fact I think it is adding to the already overburdened workload of teachers it is also putting a great deal of unnecessary pressure on young children. However while listening to a report on BBC Reporting Scotland tonight something the reporter said made alarm bells ring with me.

They mentioned the curriculum. Yes, that horrible document that I don’t like. The alarm bells rang because primary 1 and early learning and childcare share the same Early Level of the curriculum. So, if primary 1 is under threat of these assessments how long before children in Early Learning are being out through this?

Are we forgetting they are children and not items of data?