Emma Turner
speaker
289 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 24 Jul
Emma Turner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
I've been trying to get you on for absolutely ages, Dixie. And Tom said, how do you two know each other? And full disclosure for this episode, I have known and worked with Dixie for a very long time. And she's taught all of my children. So anything that she says tonight, I can fully corroborate. Yeah.
Oh, I could talk for days, three to five business days just off the top of my head. OK, so Emma, so you're the expert here. I've got loads of questions, but let's kick off. What do we want Dixie to tell us about? If you go and visit Dixie's classroom, there's a big sign outside these double doors that said, this is where the magic happens.
And I absolutely love that sign. It makes me smile every time I walk past it. But I also think that it's not just magic. There is absolute attention to detail, real thought, intentionality, deliberate things that are going on in that classroom. But in terms of your experience, what do you think makes that magic happen? What are the kind of key ingredients initially for that truly high quality EYFS provision?
Oh, yes, I do. I do. And what's really interesting is that the children, my children, talked about that all the way over the summer. So all of those things that sound like they're a lot of hard work and they're time consuming, those were the things, they were the anchors for the children that meant that when they did start school, they were ready and they were happy to go in and they'd got those recognisable adults. And even more so,
I remember doing your meeting with my youngest over Zoom, Dixie, because he joined the school during Covid. But I think this is the process that Dixie is outlining as well is one of the reasons why the new national guidance about transition into reception has come out. This movement away from transition into a school based setting being
not just a one-off event, but a genuine process over time, that if you're going to start children off on their journey into formal education in a formal school setting, that that can't just be one morning nipping in and that all of the learning and all of the development for those younger children has to sit on that really deep, well-planned, rich induction process so that by the time you want to start any formal learning, they're ready for that. Mm-hmm.
so that they feel that it's happening with them and not to them. And that has really brought a difference in their engagement, in their learning as well. It's really interesting when you go in there because I go in there quite a lot and it's never the same every year. It genuinely is based on what those children need. But when you stand up tall as an adult and you can see that whole environment, there's lots of little mini sections and mini parts to it.
that the children will be in. And very often you go in there and you don't feel like there's 45 children in there. Like there's 12 because the children are so focused on what they're doing in these little pockets and little dens. And the adults are...
watching and observing and working with small groups of children to move their thinking on but there's absolute pockets of brilliance all the way through the classroom but it starts off quite i would say spartan but there's less in there so the children learn how to use each area then more is gradually put in as the curriculum
And expands as the children's knowledge expands and they learn how to use it. So by the end of the year, it's rich, it's full, it's busy. But that's almost like an external representation of what the children have now got in their heads because they've gradually added to that environment as the as the year has gone on. It's genuinely fascinating to watch the development of it.
over a year and to walk into a clip and to walk into there at the beginning of the year i think can i work out what this cohort is about like just from what dixie's put out yeah i've got so many questions about this but um
What's really funny about that, Dixie, is I did a visit into that year one, two class and there was a vase full of naked Barbie dolls. And I said to this child, oh, that's interesting. What are those dollies there for? And she looked at me with this withering look and went, that is because we are tailors.
And she pulled out this set of sewing equipment from underneath and showed me all the stitches that she could do and how to cut the fabric out and how she was measuring up the dolls. But I was just thinking to the untrained eye, that looks like potentially a load of random Barbie dolls on there. But actually that child had got brilliant DT skills, measuring skills, the knowledge about how to join fabrics together and how to make it fit. But it was done at an age and stage appropriate way. Yeah.
And the other thing about the continuous provision as well with with not having a timetable, it does sound scary, but it's also really sensible because if you've got a timetable that says you're going to do phonics at nine o'clock and I was in a classroom where this happened recently and at nine o'clock it was snowing.
What is the point of trying to do phonics when it's snowing outside just because it's nine o'clock? Actually, what those children needed to do was go and have a look at the snow and play in the snow, not some poor lady in this classroom trying to get through phonics and trying to pretend it wasn't snowing. So the lack of timetable, formal timetable, gives you the flexibility to respond to the children, to the environment, to what's going on and pick the most sensible time to do it, not the most...
It's still I do, we do, you do. But the I do and we do is kind of together on the carpet. But when they go off and do the you do, that's in provision. So it's the same process, but it's just split up. And when when you've done that input in year one, two.
And they might do that input on, I don't know, history or RE or whatever, but then the children will go off into provision. Now, some of them might go and do an activity in provision that is linked to what was just been taught. Some of them might not. They might be going off to practice.
whatever they were doing in maths or science or anything. But the adults then in provision are watching what the children are doing. They know what the curriculum is. So they know how to move those children's thinking on. And I remember being in one of the year one, two classes and there was a little boy lying down and to all intents and purposes was just flicking through an iPad. And I thought, oh, what's going on here then? So I had a little chat with him. And he said, oh, I'm just checking this story of Rama and Sita. I said, oh.
what do you know about romance well we did it in story time the other day he said well I'm just checking that this version everything's in the same order I was
genuinely revisiting the story, cross-checking it, remembering it, thinking about something that's done the other day, but looks like, again, to the untrained eye, like a child just flicking aimlessly through an iPad, but he's not. And that has been set up in that area for the children to do that. And he knows how to access that. So they're still doing independent practice, but that independent practice isn't necessarily shunted onto the end of the teacher input directly. It's just accessed at another time.
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