Remember three-year-old Gracie, the child with the blank stare clutching her worn-out monkey? What about Kanye and Leila, sitting on the floor feeling frightened and upset?

Do you have a child in mind? Someone who craves attention in your early years setting.

A child with a story to tell, without the communication, social and emotional skills they need to tell it.

The role of the statutory key person for all these children is crucially important, and whether you are an experienced key person or new to the role, it’s vital that we keep reflecting on our practice. The key person eases children’s transition from home to nursery through purposeful, well-timed action. But they also have a crucial role in promoting young children’s learning and development once they’ve settled into their new environment.

Promoting learning across the Pedagogical Continuum

In early years settings, there are times when we, as the adult, lead learning using explicit teaching approaches. Other times, we are more spontaneous – taking advantage of a daily routine, or following a child’s line of inquiry in a way that supports their development. In this way, early years teaching is delivered across the pedagogical continuum.

As we move across the continuum, we keep a clear purpose in mind – knowing when to intervene in a way that extends each child’s learning, adapting our approach across different programmes of learning and areas of the continuous provision. Sometimes, it’s knowing when to stand back and let the child learn without interference.

Download the Early Years Pedagogical Continuum below.

This can look deceptively simple, but dig beneath the surface, and you start to see the carefully crafted complexity of teaching and learning in the early years: the team of early educators all moving skillfully between children, the balance of adult-initiated guided interaction and child-initiated activity, all carefully planned to change over the course of the day to maximise opportunities for every child to learn.

Unlocking the Evidence Store

The new Early Years Evidence Store is being developed to support the training of key people working in early years settings. It has been developed as part of the EEF’s work as an evidence partner for the DfE’s Stronger Practice Hubs. In the Evidence Store, EEF use the pedagogical continuum to show how evidence-based teaching approaches can be implemented in any early years setting.

As is demonstrated in the store, whilst the context for teaching and learning may change, the focus on deliberate, intentional interaction stays constant. Early Years Educators are shown following the ShREC approach: sharing attention, being responsive, expanding interactions, and where appropriate promoting back and forth conversation.

High Quality interactions in the Early Years – Download the shREC approach below.

So, let us go back to the child in mind – the one who craves your attention .

The exemplification from across the continuum in the evidence store helps us, as the adults, to visualise how each evidence-based teaching approach might look in our own settings, working with different age groups and in different early learning contexts.

The summaries of evidence help us to articulate what we are teaching and the reasons why.

They might even challenge us to refine or change our approaches to help that child who needs our attention.

Take a look at our Evidence Store.