"Focusing attention"??

[beckyteddy]

Can anyone shed any light on what is meant by "Focusing attention - still listen or do, but can shift own attention" from the 30-50 month section in Listening and Attention from Development Matters?.....this statement always stumps me! What sort of observation would show that a child fulfils this statement?

[moggy]

We are not trying to show the child is fulfilling each statement. They are just possible things a theoretical child might do or might not do.

I think the statement is about not yet being able to listen while doing something else- they have to stop doing to be able to listen. So you need to get their attention before asking them to do something.

But it is not something we need to 'prove' a child is doing to fit in that stage of development. If a child is doing something like that, then it shows the child is roughly in that stage of development- not the other way round IYSWIM!.

[beckyteddy]

We are supposed to link our observations to individual development matters statements though, so surely we are meant to be showing when and how the children are "achieving" those statements? By giving evidence of them doing each thing once we've observed it?

[beckyteddy]

I'm writing a summary for one of my mindees and I know she's in the 30-50 month stage for Listening and Attention I just wasn't sure what I might have already seen her do that would fit with this statement.

[moggy]

We are supposed to link our observations to individual development matters statements though, so surely we are meant to be showing when and how the children are "achieving" those statements? By giving evidence of them doing each thing once we've observed it?

We do not have to link our observations to individual Dev Matters/EYO statements. It has never been a requirement, the problems with doing so as I said above.

I link all Obs to 1, 2 or 3 relevant Areas (PD, PSED, CL etc) only, not even Aspects (but that is because I know what Aspect each would fit into and want to save time).

I find the 'best fit' age/stage for a child in my termly progress reviews by reading the complete set of statements for an age/stage and seeing if that is the best fit for that child, or not. There are many statements that a child will never do but still be progressing beautifully. There are a billion things a child will do that are not listed in those statements.

Of course, we all have our own ways of linking obs, this is just my view but where it has been discussed in the past here has been agreed Dev Matters or EYO are not 'tick lists' to be matched to word for word and ticked off.

[beckyteddy]

Ok, I'm just going to say that I'm really happy with the way I do my obs and my friend who does exactly the same has just been graded as Outstanding so Ofsted are obviously happy too.

I wasn't really asking for a critique of how to link observations to the EYFS I was just asking if anyone had any helpful ideas about what that particular statement might be pertaining to, as I've never been able to work out what it actually means.

Thank you Moggy for taking the time to reply but it's really just help with that particular statement that I'm looking for.

[AdeleMarie88]

I always took it to mean being able to stay focused on activities, occasionally switching to different tasks if needed, but still switched on, e..g boy playing with farm and is trying to attach trailer to tractor, I say, Johnny come and out your shoes on, so they do straight away, but then returns to trying to fix tractor. Does that make sense? X

[beckyteddy]

That makes perfect sense, thank you!