Guest Posted August 4, 2004 Posted August 4, 2004 Hi I'm in the process of changing the planning for our foundation stage unti which will be starting in September. We are not happy with the planning as it is too complicated and bitty (lots of different bits of paper and rotas) and will become even more complicated next year when there will be 6 of us all working from the plans. I have managed to produce long term planning and medium term planning formats that we are all happy with and am now looking at short term planning which is proving very stressfull! We need to incorporate independent choice and adult focus activities as well as routine everyday activites such as carpet group sessions when the children are working with their key worker. I have looked at plans on this site and have found them very helpful for long and medium term planning but am struggling to see how the short term plan works to tell practicioners what they are doing in each session of the day- this is what my staff feel they need to be able to work effectively. it would be really helpful if someone could show/ send me a copy of their weekly plans and routines. Hope someone can help thanks carolione
Guest Posted August 4, 2004 Posted August 4, 2004 Hi there, I have no solutions to offer here, just a note to say I agree! I seemed to spend most of last year writing stuff out again - once for my folder and once to use throughout the day! I hope someone can help out with a solution, but I'm beginning to think that there isn't really a great way of doing weekly/daily planning and that we're all doomed to having bits & pieces of paper floating around the whole time!! With sympathy, Dianne
catma Posted August 4, 2004 Posted August 4, 2004 I had a daily schedule to structure the day: the things that were always at that time every day etc. Then I had a focused activity schedule: the planned adult led activities in each area. There were 3 of us so we rotated weekly from CLL/maths to KUW/creative to outside. Then we had a planner for the other areas that were being resourced but which we discussed and changed daily acording to children's responses to resources etc. Before I left the school we were looking at this as the model for a bigger FS unit so I think it would have worked Ok in our school. Example of weeklyshort term plans attached! Focus_activity_schedule_spring_2_week_2.doc
Guest Posted August 4, 2004 Posted August 4, 2004 Thanks for replies. Catma- you said you had a daily schedule- did this include register, small group activities ,etc? Did you have objectives listed on there?
catma Posted August 5, 2004 Posted August 5, 2004 The daily schedule is attached, this was basically when stuff happened to keep order of the day. I also had the short term planning which was the activities and objectives. I'll attch that to a second reply here. Hope it's of interest Cx nursery_schedule_no_snack.doc
catma Posted August 5, 2004 Posted August 5, 2004 Short term planning that linked to the Activity schedules attached above. short_term_planner_nursery_Sp_2__week_2.doc
Helen Posted August 6, 2004 Posted August 6, 2004 Catma, As well as your plans being very organised and easy to follow, they're really attractive too! You've got me thinking about making mine prettier. Cazza, We went through a process last year which started from us all thinking that our short term planning needed changing. We felt we were repeating things from our medium term planning, and this was taking up lots of time at staff meetings when we could have been doing more productive stuff! So, we took out the PSE, Music, and Physical Development sections now from the short term planning sheet, and we write these up in what we have called our Curriculum File. Basically, these plans show all the things we do on a daily basis, and which stepping stones and early learning goals these cover. The plans include general routines, circle time (a member of staff is responsible for the circle time planning), music sessions (we have two each session, and I now have a file of two years' worth of music and movement sessions, so this doesn't now need to be on the short term planning sheet.) I've done a similar thing with the physical development, ie listed all the things that we do on a daily basis, resources and activities freely available to develop this area of learning, and all the stepping stones and ELGs these activities cover. It's all very much a work in progress (I has planned to tidy it all up this holiday but that's gone out the window!), but it has meant that our short term planning each week has been greatly reduced. We now have on our short term planning sheet sections for CLL, Maths, K&U, (both for inside and outside), and we have a separate sheet for creative workshop activities. We also have a staff rota sheet, showing where each member of staff is stationed /her duties that day, and this is up on the wall for easy reference. These sections include the three rooms of the nursery, the "floating" member of staff, who is leading Big Book time and Music time, who prepares snack and clears up, who leads action rhyme/keep fit time, movement (PE) time and circle time. As music, movement and circle time have already been planned for, as described above, everyone usually knows what's going on! Don't know if this makes any sense at all, but reducing the repetitive planning on a weekly basis was our aim, and this has really done the trick. We had an Ofsted earlier in the year, and the inspector was very happy with the paperwork.
catma Posted August 6, 2004 Posted August 6, 2004 Thanks for the lovely feedback!! The colours just helped define things so I didn't have to spell it out in writing!!!
Guest Posted August 21, 2004 Posted August 21, 2004 As an NQT last year, I thought it was just me who struggled with short term planning! I changed it so many times last year! (luckily, my head is extremely supportive and says that the planning is for me, not her!). However, my struggle is finding out how to get everything onto one main plan rather than lots of different ones! I started with a daily timetable of activities showing LOs, staffing, activity, and it worked brilliantly, it just took a long time to write each week. This year I am trying to implement assessment for learning training into my planning and I have been using success criteria, which is shared with the children. I am lucky to begin the year with an additional 2 full-time teaching assistants and I want to maximise their use so I have been trying to think of the best way to plan. I am starting the year with each member of staff being allocated to a particular group each day. (I will have 5 groups, so 2 groups will be completing C.I. activities or free play). For example one TA may do the group reading for the week but she will know that on Monday, she must complete the activity with Red group, Tuesday with Yellow and so on. So each adult has one/two activities that they will complete with each group over the week on a set day. Last year I used a preset taskboard that directed children to a particular activity through each session, so that over the week I knew that each group had covered the same activities, but this year I want to encourage more independent choice (any advice welcome!). I have downloaded planning from this site and have adapted it to suit me, I will attempt to attach it!!! Catma your planning looks very comprehensive & definitely pretty, I am going to study it later when I go offline! I will attach a copy of my previous planning in timetable format, as it was extremely useful, but I felt it was time consuming to fill out! I have only just started writing my weekly plan for September and it is not yet complete - but hopefully it will give you an idea! Success criteria, for those of you who are unsure, is what the children need to do in order to achieve the LO. Weekly_plan_Sept_13.04.doc
Guest Posted August 21, 2004 Posted August 21, 2004 Only one downloadable file with each message I presume! Here goes for the old style daily timetable format!! Weekly_plan_June_7.04.doc
Guest Posted August 21, 2004 Posted August 21, 2004 I can see that 2 people downloaded my original version of Sept planning. I suddenly realised that I had included some children's names - this has now been amended.
Guest Posted August 21, 2004 Posted August 21, 2004 Thanks Shelley it looks really useful. I'm still plodding on trying to get sorted. The success criteria of your planning sounds really interesting. How do you go about doing this?
Guest Posted August 21, 2004 Posted August 21, 2004 Deciding on the success criteria is really hard, so I don't do it for everything. Last year I just did it for maths, but it can also be easier to decide on success criteria for skills e.g. using a glue stick etc. This has all come about as I am heavily involved in trialling different things for Assessment for Learning, which is really big over here at the moment. When writing success criteria (SC), it is important to start with things the children can do already to give them confidence, then add things slowly, in particular for skills such as writing. I always share the SC with the children and return to them throughout the session/day/week. It is great to say did you do this...?, did you do that...? (referring to SC) when discussing activities and congratulating the children because they have succeeded. It does take a while to get used to it, and I am definitely no expert, in fact it helps if you write the SC with someone else too! I have written SC, used it, then realised that it is not child-friendly or doesn't flow properly. It should basically be a step-by-step guide to success! The children really got used to being given SC and were able to tell me what it was or even devise their own! This becomes a type of self-assessment and can also be used for peer-assessment, I found it to be a big success with the children, it will just take time to devise the SC. We plan on having a whole staff meeting with all staff sharing and contributing to a staff bank of SC!! Here is a simple example: Counting L.I.: Count forwards from 0-100 with assistance Success Criteria: ¨ Listen to the teacher ¨ Watch the pointer ¨ Follow the speed of the pointer ¨ Look at the number ¨ Say the number out loud Hope that it makes sense and is useful! I'm just trying it all out too really, but it does seem to focus the children well. If anyone else is interested - perhaps we could work together and devise some SC between us for shared Learning Intentions? Anyone out there up for it?!
Guest Posted August 22, 2004 Posted August 22, 2004 sounds good to me I think it would be really useful
Lorna Posted August 23, 2004 Posted August 23, 2004 sounds like a good idea. I really like the way they are in child speak... makes it nice and clear. L
Sue R Posted August 23, 2004 Posted August 23, 2004 Shelley, You are inspiring me here. Some of you may know that at the moment I really do not know whether I'm on my head or my proverbial, so please excuse my not responding immediately. But I will!! Sue
Guest Posted August 23, 2004 Posted August 23, 2004 No probs....look forward to your input! By the way - Happy Birthday Lorna - was it a good one? I will be joing you the day we go back to school - '77 was a good year!!!!!
Susan Posted August 24, 2004 Posted August 24, 2004 HI Shelley I think this should be in a new thread. It needs a status of its own as its too important to tag on the end of another. Not sure if I can do that without help but if I get it moved is that okay?
Guest Posted August 24, 2004 Posted August 24, 2004 That sounds great! Don't know how to either! Steeeeve?????
Susan Posted August 25, 2004 Posted August 25, 2004 Topic re started " Success Criteria" in this forum. Lets all have a go!!! MY first moderating task completed! and I think I'm going to hit the 1000 post with this one!
Steve Posted August 25, 2004 Posted August 25, 2004 Um - hello chaps! Just got back from my sunny two weeks in the west country! So I'm just catching up. I'll split this topic tomorrow if that's ok? Once I've worked out what's going on. Thanks Shelley for what looks like some really valuable stuff! I see everyone's getting busy and excited about the new year - that's good to see. It was a bit quiet in early August! * Edit: sorry, I see Susan beat me to it. Well done Susan - and congratulations on the big 1000. I don't feel so lonely now!
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