Interacting or Interfering? Improving Interactions in the Early Years

Book excerpt: High quality interactions are recognised as fundamental to the achievement of outstanding teaching and learning in the early years. If you are working with children from six months to six years this authoritative new book from leading author Julie Fisher encourages you to reflect deeply on the quality and impact of interactions in your setting. Drawing on research undertaken in baby rooms, nurseries and classrooms over four years the book challenges prevailing orthodoxies and offers specific practical guidance on how to improve the quality of interactions on a day-to-day basis. With its illuminating examples, the book shows how you can best tune into and respond effectively to young children’s conversations. It exemplifies how interactions are most effectively sustained and how developing high quality interactions can better scaffold and support children’s learning and development. 'Interacting or Interfering?' • Identifies the key components of effective interactions and how implementing these can improve the quality of children’s learning • Contains transcripts of interactions from baby rooms through to Year 2 classes which exemplify key messages • Provides prompts you can use to analyse and improve your own practice Written in the author’s exceptionally clear and accessible style, this book is indispensable reading for all students and practitioners working and studying in the early years.