chapter 18

Early Years: Under 5-years-old

Teachers and Learning Support Assistants in Early Years Education have many approaches they intuitively use which are closely aligned with NLP. Their focus on pleasurable states and enjoyment is an important lesson for all teachers. We have not as yet had many teachers working in this age group qualify in NLP, but the short case studies below from the Durham and Northumberland projects show their enthusiasm for the subject and learning more.

Changing submodalities to overcome anxiety and create happy states
Changing the internal experience using submodalities and visualising outcomes works with even very small children.

Erica Tait teaches at Malvin’s Close Primary Academy in Blyth, Northumberland

Research Plan
During our NLP training, I was particularly fascinated with how visualisation techniques linked to anchoring could have such a positive impact upon a person’s emotional state and their own perceptions. Therefore I wanted to see whether I could initiate such strong responses within my own practice in the classroom environment.

Action
After speaking to her parents after school, it was identified that A was getting really upset and worried at home for no apparent reason that the parent could see. It was evident that she had no coping strategies for dealing with her emotions after specific events at home and school.

I chose a time in the classroom where we would not be disturbed by other children and decided to use the Submodality Comparison Checklist to gain a greater insight to A’s own feelings and perceptions when she got upset. I felt it was vital that I didn’t ask her too many questions about why she was upset, instead focusing on an approach to cope with her feelings in difficult times. First of all she thought of a sad experience. She said she could see a room straight in front of her eyes, and that it was very dim with ‘pointy bits’. She also used her arms to represent something heavy pushing her down. After that we focused on a positive experience and her face immediately lit up. She said she could see a photo of her friends which was yellow and bright. She looked up to her left slightly when she was speaking to me. She also said there were giggling noises, which made her laugh. I brought the picture closer to her face and she immediately laughed, which gave her a bit of a shock! We then discussed the benefit of the feeling and how she could use this picture/feeling when she felt that she couldn’t cope with a sad feeling at home or at school.

Impact
For the rest of the week she caught my eye and looked at the direction of the picture and smiled. Two days later her mum came in to tell me that she had changed at home in the evenings. A had even told her mum that she had her own picture that made her feel warm inside. A week later she even managed to sort out a disagreement with a group of friends by saying, ‘I can help us; I like it when we are happy. I know I make them feel warm like friends can’ .

NLP has enabled A to express her emotions much more at home, and has given her the confidence to tackle new or uncomfortable situations in a positive way as opposed to how she coped before.

As a teacher I have become a great deal more confident when dealing with difficult children or situations, and I believe this is solely due to the experience I have had using NLP methods.

Small changes in language to create a big impact

Laura Holland teaches at Mowbray First School, Choppington, Northumberland

Research Plan
I became very interested in discovering the impact I could have by introducing some small changes in the way I spoke to my pupils. The child referred to as P is a 5-year-old boy in my Year 1 class. I had begun to notice that P, who had been diagnosed as having Type 1 Diabetes at the end of his Reception year, was lacking motivation towards his written work. As a result, the work that he was producing was of a poor quality in comparison to other pupils of the same ability.

Through my first experience of NLP I became aware of how the use of my own language when responding to his work was impacting on his attitude towards his writing in independent tasks. He responded well to visual rewards such as stickers but the verbal feedback was not having the same effect, even though I felt that I was responding in a positive way. I hoped that changing a few words around would encourage a more consistent and positive attitude towards learning.

Action
I am sure that many practitioners in the primary sector will be familiar with the concept of ‘Two stars and a Wish’ as a child’s technique for self-assessment.

Previously, when responding to P’s work, I would always start with the positive aspects, for example; whether he had achieved the success criteria, good content or use of vocabulary. I would follow this with ‘but’ (your handwriting is untidy, you haven’t put your capital letters in the right place, you have no full stops etc) . Learning about language techniques through NLP showed me how phrasing the language in this way and using ‘but’ following the positive language was in fact erasing all the praise and left the focus on the negative.
I changed the order of the phrases around ‘but’ and adding ‘and’ such as: ‘You missed out your full stops and forgot to use a capital letter for the proper nouns but your handwriting is excellent and you have used some really creative story words…’

Impact
I found I had a different child in my class; one who was motivated and eager to produce good work, and who took pride in what he did. I became more self-aware of how I used language to assess the work of other children and made a conscious effort to ensure that I made use of ‘and’ and ‘but’ in a more constructive and positive way. This impacted on all children with regard to their motivation and pride in how they responded to and presented their work. ‘And’ and ‘but’, are small words that have proved themselves to be powerful and influential tools in the classroom. Through my research project, I have seen the way in which they can motivate children to learn and take pride in what they have done, which only serves to boost their confidence and make them eager to achieve well.

Language patterns with children with little English language
Changes in language impact on very young children even those whose first language is not English.

Julia Quinn works in the Foundation Stage Unit, Framwellgate Moor Primary School, Durham

Research Plan
After the first 2 days of NLP training I decided to focus on a little boy, who I will call G, who had quite severe behavioural problems. He understood very little English, was extremely bright and had been moved about a lot. He had only been in our school for a couple of months. My focus was on helping him to settle and be less excitable, while not damping down his natural exuberance. At the time of the research, his English speech was not very clear. I wanted to see if he could be helped by NLP techniques and more one-to-one attention.

Action
I helped him to imagine a boy who was really good friends with everyone, and made his daddy happy every day (he is extremely close to Dad who brings him to school). I also used stickers with him and he really WANTED those stickers! I had thought perhaps he was too intelligent to be ‘bribed’ but I was wrong. I made it more specific and worked on him producing ‘desired states’ by saying what the sticker was for, for example, sitting down properly, crossing legs, not hurting friends etc., and he understood that too.

Impact
We all worked extremely hard to praise G at all times and to be aware of our use of language when working with him. G improved considerably.

Music and State Management
A number of Early Years teachers focused on the use of music and anchoring. Here is a summary of their projects:

Joni White works with Reception children at Framwellgate Moor Primary School, Durham

Research plan
 Creating positive learning states is very important to me as I work in the Early Years age group. This is a time when children should be developing good learning strategies and an enjoyment of learning and school life. Pupils are developing curiosity and a thirst for learning without fear of failure, feeling safe and secure enough to make mistakes and gain from all activities they encounter. To achieve these aims I planned a five–step process:

  1. Assess the pupils’ current state of mind at key moments throughout the day. Identify times of the day where the classroom state could be improved.
  2. Trial pieces of music at different times of the day for different purposes. Consider factors such as pace and rhythm of music, volume level and whether the music has words.
  3. Record the ‘feeling’ of the state of the classroom during the different pieces of music.
  4. Reflect each day upon which pieces of music were successful at which points during the day and consider why.
  5. Create a bank of music that is suitable for key points during a day and record it on planning.

Action
I used my laptop computer as the images which appear on the interactive whiteboard are also very useful in creating an atmosphere. These images move and rotate in accordance with the music being played. The success criteria for the project were that:

A positive response from the pupils on how they felt about different pieces of music would also be considered. The timescale for the project was initially one month. To implement my project I began by looking at key times in the day when pupils’ state was not appropriate for learning. The key times I identified were:

I began to find particular pieces of music caused a different response from the ones I anticipated. One fast piece of music I selected for tidying up caused a frantic state of mind. I had thought the piece would make the children tidy up quicker and be ready to begin work. Instead, it made them tidy frantically and when they sat down they were still very unsettled and not engaging with the learning for at least the first 5 minutes of the lesson.

During one handwriting session I decided to look at how music would affect the engagement of the learner if it was played while they were working. I chose a classical instrumental piece as I didn’t want the music to disturb the children. I chose handwriting as I decided it wasn’t a task that needed a great deal of active concentration in comparison to something like addition, where children need to count and often calculate out loud. The music really seemed to help the children to focus upon the task, and it really helped them to carry out their task more quickly. As this had succeeded, I used it the following week in the same lesson.

I am currently in the process of putting together all the most useful music tracks I have onto one CD with a note beside each track regarding the influence the music ‘should’ have. I will regularly use this CD with my new Reception class.

Impact
The improved ‘state’ of the class after the use of music has had the most influence upon my keenness to change my approach, and I intend to feed back to all of the staff in our school on the benefits of using music in the classroom for changing pupils’ state. I believe this is something I would like to investigate further to consider other learning which could be influenced by music.

Using established Musical Anchors

Louise Lightly teaches at Wansbeck First School, Ashington, Northumberland

Research Plan
When deciding upon the focus for my learning I thought about the issues I felt were causing disruption within the classroom for the children, as well as thinking about which times of the day I felt most stressed out by the children’s behaviour and the lack of routine.

Action
I decided to trial a piece of music at tidy-up time at the end of a session in order to aid the children to tidy up quietly, co-operatively and responsibly. I wanted the music to act as an anchor which would tell the children that it was time to tidy up and encourage them to do so in a positive way. I discussed with the children what they felt good tidying would look like in our classroom. They said many of the things I hoped, such as quiet, sensible, quick, no silliness . I then introduced them to my chosen piece of music taken from the Disney film, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. We discussed what this piece of music made them feel. We used this piece of music for the first week of the trial and to begin with the children responded well. However, after a few days the children went back to their old ways of not tidying up quickly or sensibly. We then tried music from the Harry Potter films and the children said they would be able to do ‘magic’ tidying. However, I found that when I played this music many of the children got over-excited and this resulted in a noisy and distracting atmosphere.

I spent some time discussing my learning with my colleagues and the nursery teacher suggested I trialed the tidy-up music my colleagues used in the Nursery class.

Impact
The first time I used this music I didn’t discuss it with the children; when they heard it they recognised it as the nursery tidy-up music and instantly responded to it. I believe that this is due to the strong anchor created during their time in Nursery - the children still related the piece of music to tidying up.

I intend to use this music in September with my new Reception class. I am now working more closely with the Nursery team to ensure continuity in the music we use within Foundation Stage classrooms. This is something which I am hoping to discuss implementing throughout the rest of school.

Creative use of Spatial Anchoring in the classroom

Rachael extends the range and scope of anchors for tidying up, home time and conflict resolution.

Rachael Coull teaches at Northburn Primary School, Cramlington, Northumberland

Research plan
My focus is on the use of anchoring and the impact this has on behaviour.

Throughout the project my aim is for the children to become more aware of expectations in relation to behaviour at specific points in the Nursery session. Because of more explicit expectations and increased consistency between staff, it is hoped the children’s behaviour will improve, which will offer them greater opportunity to access the curriculum.

During my morning Nursery class, since the January intake the behaviour of some children had become increasingly challenging, especially at times where it was necessary to gain whole class attention and calm in order to carry out a routine task such as home time or tidy-up time.

Action
 Initially, I pinpointed two particular times where the class was not as calm or organised as I would have liked. I already use a countdown technique in order to get whole class attention when they are in the middle of play. Although this worked for the majority, there were still some children who consistently did not follow this routine and would carry on playing or chatting, making it a more lengthy process than it needed to be. The other main time was home time, which had become a pretty stressful occasion – trying to give out pictures, asking the children to remain seated and calling out their names to dismiss them. I decided to carry on using my countdown technique as this was already partly successful so I set about designating a specific spot to stand in when I wanted to gain the class’ attention.

I chose one spot inside and another outside (which became the “tidy-up time spot”). The more I used this technique, the quicker the children reacted and the less I had to say. After a couple of weeks of using the spot outside I would put my hand in the air, say ‘five’ and the children began to run to where I was standing and sit down on the floor, ready for their tidy-up task.

As this anchor became embedded, I watched other staff use the same technique but in random positions and saw it to be less successful, with some children taking a long time to respond and some not even coming to the spot. As I made my intentions explicit to the other staff, they began to take on this concept and also saw the benefits, also introducing their own ideas. One day, because the children had spilt water on the area we usually stop at, I stood a couple of metres away and used the same technique and the children still responded quickly, however instead of coming to sit in a group, they all came and sat in a perfect circle. I later discovered that the previous day, the TA in my class had gathered the children in that spot to play some ring games – they had in fact created their own anchor, which we continued to use successfully for that purpose.

As for home time, I decided to anchor the experience with music – initially making my intentions clear to the children, telling them what behaviour I would see and why before turning on the music. This process was a little more gradual and I never fully established the “ideal golden silence”, however this time proved to be a lot calmer than previously. The children were able to receive their pictures more quickly, hear their names being called more easily, and the parents were visibly impressed, commenting on the calm and peacefulness as they entered Nursery at home time, and the staff felt less stressed.

As these anchors became embedded, others followed, including the “rant and rave chair” - a stool which I only sat on when I was “feeling a little bit cross!” and needed to talk to the class as a whole. I was unsure whether this particular anchor would have as much effect as the others because only on rare occasions does the class need to be addressed as a whole in relation to behaviour. However, after only using this technique a couple of times in a four-week period all I have to do now is sit on the stool in front of the children, their faces drop and there is silence as one child asks, ‘are you feeling a bit sad?’

A further anchor which came about throughout this project as a team effort, was to help deal with children in conflict situations as and when they happened. The anchor came in the form of 3 chairs placed in a triangle formation. The two children sit facing each other and the third chair is for a member of staff to mediate between the two. Again, this technique quickly became embedded, with some children at times going to get their own chair when they realised they had done something wrong! The main benefit of this technique is that the children appear to calm down more quickly after an incident and, through structured questioning and discussion, are able to resolve conflict. I found that children were increasingly able to own up to what happened and seek a resolution acceptable to themselves, meaning they did not quite as readily go and do the same thing again.

Impact
Throughout the project there has been a great positive impact on the staff and children. Routine tasks throughout the session are carried out in a more focused manner and the children’s behaviour at these times has improved. Along with this, staff are able to deal with situations in a calmer manner and are more explicit about the reasons for doing things and this has made us as a team more focused on what we want to achieve and how.

This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, dluzi@managementalchemy.com on 10/18/2018