Challenging Early Learning: Helping Young Children Learn How to Learn

What are the goals of Early Years education? A lot of people ask this question and receive answers ranging from keeping children safe; introducing them to the values of society; encouraging a love of language; giving them experience of socialising, harmonising and behaving appropriately. This book shares the best strategies to help children grow into even more curious, resilient, happy, articulate and thoughtful learners.

Challenging Early Learning takes James Nottingham's tried and tested and acclaimed 'learning to learn' methodology and applies it to teaching three- to seven-year-olds. Each chapter includes:

• Colourful and stimulating learning activities that will help children learn how to learn.
• Practical 'Now Try This' sections that encourage readers to think about current practice and explore new ideas.
• A Review section that focuses on building a broad tool kit of teaching strategies.

Covering a range of key topics such as feedback, dialogue, growth mindset and the Learning Pit, this book is aimed at all pedagogues, teachers, parents and leaders wanting to challenge the way in which we learn and make learning more challenging.

James and Jill Nottingham started an educational company in 1999 to support local nurseries and schools with the development of Philosophy for Children. This evolved into a multimillion-pound social regeneration project to raise the aspirations and abilities of young people in North East England. With the success of this project, early childhood centres across Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand wanted to get involved in the Nottinghams’ award-winning approaches to challenge, dialogue, feedback, questioning and progress. To meet this demand, Jill and James set up companies in Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and now employ 30 educational experts who lead, demonstrate and guide practitioners and parents in the best ways to enhance young children’s learning.