Helen Fraser, the early years expert, offered the conference the notion of a “spiralling curriculum”, in which young children are able to consider an experience from every angle, looking to the past and to the future.
Innovations such as digital photographs enabled practitioners to “mine children’s experiences more deeply” and allow them more opportunities to go backwards and forwards, watching themselves doing something they did last week, talking about it and sharing their feelings, and having new ideas as a result.
“That is spiralling - it gives different children different opportunities for their mind and exploration within that”, Ms Fraser said.