CPD Notes 2010

Lynn Taylor 2010

Contents

BackgroundZiggy leafletBirth to ThreeGo Safe With ZiggyReal life experience and play

Lynn Taylor 2010

Background

The new approach has been developed following consultation of key stakeholders from around Scotland, the review of relevant road safety research, Scottish Government early years policy and recent scientific developments into early brain development.

Early Cognitive Development

A child’s brain forms connections from even before birth. As it encounters new experiences connections called synapses, are formed in the brain. By 6 years of age a child has formed the maximum amount of connections they are ever going to make. From this age the brain works out what synapses are useful and what connections to ‘prune away’.

As a child grows her ability to understand language, solve problems and get along with other people will be influenced by what she experiences as a young child. Of course genetics have a role to play here too, but there is mounting evidence that experiences affect the way genes are expressed (i.e. turned on and off) in the developing brain. All the positive and negative experiences and interactions of early childhood have a direct link to how a child develops as a person.

Scientists now know a major ingredient in this developmental process is the “serve and return” relationship between children and their parents and other caregivers in the family or community.

Lynn Taylor 2010

The brain’s capacity for change decreases with age. The brain is most flexible, or “plastic,” early in life to accommodate a wide range of environments and interactions, but as the maturing brain becomes more specialised to assume more complex functions, it is less capable of reorganising and adapting to new or unexpected challenges.

Although the “windows” for language learning and other skills remain open, these brain circuits become increasingly difficult to alter over time. Early flexibility of the brain (plasticity) means it’s easier and more effective to influence a young child’s developing brain architecture than to rewire parts of its circuitry in the adult years.

The basic principles of neuroscience indicate that early preventive intervention will be more efficient and produce more favourable outcomes than remediation later in life.

This has obvious implications for road safety education. Road safety education at early level should focus on not only upon knowledge and understanding, but developing positive behaviours and attitudes for life. This has also been recommended in road safety studies.

These findings also highlight the importance of including a focus on birth to three within the new approach.

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Recommendations from the Consultation

Road safety education is widely viewed as being about partnership, with parents reinforcing messages learned within nursery / playgroup /primary school and vice versa.

Consultees stressed that the approach to delivering road safety messages must fit in with Curriculum for Excellence. This means a stong focus on active learning, a clear transition and consistent messages from pre-school to primary and a strong role for parents and carers.

There was consensus that a new approach should focus on a small number of key messages. Suggestions included: traffic; walking; playing; holding hands; crossing the road; and in-car safety.

Consultees wanted the new approach to contain engaging stories with identifiable characters. There was a preference for ‘proper books’ to be involved as opposed to workbooks and a greater emphasis on messages being delivered through a ‘book at bedtime’ approach.

For children / parents with additional support needs, consultees emphasised the importance of adaptability and a strong focus on bright and engaging visual and pictorial materials. Rural context and Gaelic language issues should be considered when developing the approach.

There were concerns around adopting an ‘opt-in’ registration process. Suggested alternatives included blanket mailing, distributions through education establishments and links with other programmes.

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Lynn Taylor 2010

Birth to Three

Out and About Baby Buggy Book

The aim of the baby buggy book is to engage parents and carers in the idea that it’s never too early to start thinking about road safety. The book has a clip to enable it to be fitted onto a buggy and features a picture of a mum and baby on the cover. The baby could be in a rear-facing buggy or car seat.

The communication between mum and baby is clear to see, even though baby is very young. The rhyme involves babies and toddlers by featuring traffic and road sights and sounds. The blurb on the back of the book reads;

‘It’s never too early to make your baby aware of the roads around them.Talk about the traffic you see when you’re out and about. It’s the first step in road safety learning – and it’s fun too!’

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Road Safety Scotland are delighted to be working in partnership with The Scottish Book Trust in the delivery of Out and About, which will be gifted to all babies in Scotland between 6 and 16 weeks through their immunisation clinics from spring next year. The book will be the only buggy book to feature in the newly re-branded Bookbug Baby Bag.

This is an exciting collaboration and holds the possibility of special road safety themed Bookbug sessions; the highly popular weekly meetings held in libraries all over the country for parents and carers with babies and small children.

The interactive e-book of Out and About will feature on www.gosafewithziggy.com , the Scottish Booktrust Bookbug website and the Scottish Government Play, Talk Read resource.

Lynn Taylor 2010

Go Safe with Ziggy

The main aspect of the new approach is delivered through the context of Go Safe! Ziggy’s Road Safety Mission. The target audience are children between 3 and 6, their parents, carers and educators. Go Safe! – Ziggy’s Road Safety Mission is a multi-media approach featuring both real-life learning and engaging stories.

Sharing the Stories

Six stories feature at the heart of the approach. They have been especially written to inspire a child’s interest in road safety learning. Lynda Kennedy, a Glaswegian writer, has created a set of interesting characters that have more to them than meets the eye.

Lynn Taylor 2010

Ziggy is a little alien who’s come to visit Scotland with one mission in mind – to learn how to Go Safe! He joins the Walker family who help him on his mission. He is a wee bit forgetful and loves cabbages. A lot.

We join Maggie as she’s starting her nursery class in book 1 – Ziggy and the Lollipop. Maggie is funny and feisty and loves reminding Ziggy what he should be doing. She has a wee toy dog called Sausage who’s never far away.

Andrew is Maggie’s big brother. He likes to help Ziggy, and Ziggy wonders if one day he’ll know as much as Andrew.

Mum helps keep everyone safe when they’re out and about. She chats to the children and Ziggy about what they should be remembering in different road safety scenarios and always praises the children when they do the right thing.

Granny Walker lives in the countryside. She knows lots of great songs and she loves to sing with the children and Ziggy. Ziggy loves the songs but doesn’t know why anyone would want to shove their granny aff a bus because grannies are lovely – and they make great soup.

Dolly the Lollipop Lady helps Ziggy cross the road in the first story. She is a lovely cheerful and smiley lady.

The characters have been found to be particularly successful in promoting positive behaviour as it’s the children in the stories who are cast as the experts. They teach Ziggy about road safety, rather than the adults. The adults in the stories instead have a supportive and encouraging role.

The communication between the characters is the main focus. By chatting through different road safety situations they help each other’s learning journey, and in turn inspire the reader to think about their own road safety experiences.

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The typeface used in the books is a special infant font. For example, the letter ‘a’ looks like the way a child first learns to write and recognise the letter. Bold lettering has been used in places to help the reader emphasise different important words, phrases and speech.

The books have a distinctive style with the colourful characters appearing on a monotone photographic background. The photos represent the real world, and have allowed us to draw attention to specific features such as the bright lollipop stop sign or the red and green man on a pedestrian crossing.

In the final story of the series Ziggy and Maggie start school. This is the transitional tale and perfectly continues the learning across the transition from pre-school to primary.

In order to fit in naturally with an education setting’s thematic planning; the stories are themed around the seasons of the year. This will hopefully encourage educational settings to revisit road safety learning on a regular basis. The stories have also been written to inspire across curriculum active learning in context.

The stories are adaptable to meet the needs of the children and adults who share them – they can read the stories as they are or chat about the pictures and characters. A map features at the beginning of each story as children love to use maps to create their own journey tales.

This year the first book in the series ‘Ziggy and the Lollipop’ has been produced in a small book format for home. At the beginning and end of the story real-life learning is represented with brief notes for adults. These were added after recommendation from the pilot of the books.

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The larger teaching packs will be distributed to all pre-school and primary schools in the first year and feature big book versions of the six stories and an interactive CD with the web content. The big books outline the key road safety themes, suggest across curriculum learning links to Curriculum for Excellence and have activity idea cards linked to the theme of the story on the back page.

Making materials available for both home and education settings helps home / education links be established. The vast majority of young children attend some form of education setting. This helps us to overcome barriers and reach children in areas of high social deprivation.

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Real life experience and play

Sharing stories helps young children understand the world around them in a wonderful and natural way. Every time a child revisits a story they gain more knowledge and understanding.

But, as previously mentioned, knowledge and understanding alone won’t ensure the best possible start in road safety learning. The real learning will come through the real-life experiences and the interactions the young children have with the adults around them.

If adults set a good example and talk to children about the choices they make every time they cross a road, walk near a road or travel in a vehicle when they’re with a young child, that child will be experiencing the best possible start in their lifelong learning about road safety.

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The Go Safe With Ziggy Website

The approach aims to ignite that interest and inspire children and adults to embark upon their own learning journeys. The www.gosafewithziggy.com website has been designed with this in mind and is where real-life learning meets the fictional Ziggy world.

The homepage and main interface of the website have been designed for young children to explore and revisit time and time again. It features clear, colourful buttons – narrated with the pre-reader in mind. It is suitable for use both at home and in educational settings.

The three options from the homepage are read a story, play a game and watch a video. The simple activities and clips have been designed to inspire children and adults to think about and chat about road safety learning and take the messages into their everyday life.

Parents and educators can find extra resources to enhance road safety learning on the site - such as audio files, activity ideas, a gallery of road safety learning images and much more. Suggested links to Curriculum for Excellence appear in relevant sections of the site.

The previously developed RSS developed Gym Cards have been adapted to suit the demands of Curriculum for Excellence and can be downloaded from the site.

Lynn Taylor 2010