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St Andrew’s Primary School and Nursery

Spotlight – The role of the enabling adult to support effective environments and engaging experiences

Practitioners adopt the notice, analyse and respond approach to observing younger pupils’ engagement with learning experiences. During the ‘notice’ stage they seek to find out what drives pupils’ curiosity and how pupils choose resources available to them. During the ‘analyse’ stage, practitioners interpret pupils’ skills and knowledge development, assess their progress and analyse a pupil’s preferred schema1repeated actions or certain behaviours children use to make sense of the world around them. Finally, observations are used as a catalyst for planning future learning experiences. This may include staff making adaptations to the environment, planning opportunities for pupils to refine or consolidate a skill and enrich experiences further. As a result, staff act as enablers, modelling and enhancing pupils’ independence, confidence and ownership of their learning environment.