Guest Blog Author: Ms R, Assistant Headteacher at a Primary School in Manchester.
Having been lucky enough to have had a complete refurb of the FS unit, I have three spacious writing areas in FS2 as well as numerous writing opportunities throughout the provision.
In the pictured area below I sat with Jacob and asked him to write ‘a’. He sat and looked at me and then said…
‘erm, I can’t do ‘a’ but I’m good at ‘o’, I’ll do you one of those.’
He proceeded to with great pride, fill the whiteboards with ‘o’. I then asked him if he could form a ‘c’. Again he looked at me whilst twisting his innocent face and said,
‘I can do a ‘I’, I’ll do you one of them’.
He filled the whiteboard with ‘I’and looked at me with his face full of hope and said,
‘Ms Sheed, do you like that? Can I have a sticker now? Can I go on the scooter now?’
So what did Jacob demonstrate? He told me that my fabulous team and I can spend hours enhancing the writing areas but a child will only write when they are confident and ready and when will they be ready? When their bodies have developed enough to hold a pencil, when they are mature enough to sit at a chair and when they are confident enough to take that chance to make a permanent mark that an adult wants.
Until then, leave them to be children and develop their hand muscles by squeezing black, sparkly play dough, by gripping jugs and containers to pour coloured water and dry sand and by using the tweezers to pick the bones out of the lime scented jelly.