Help - Practitioners View's About Transtions

[Guest]

Hi

It's been a long Christmas trying to update all my EYCLO (new setting and EYFS has not helped)

Anyway could any of you help me with a couple of activities, as my setting does not re-open til Wednesday and I need to keep going.

 

I am trying to find out practitioners view points on what the transition process involves and the his/her role in this process.

 

What the transition involves in a pre-school environment?

What needs to be considered in the transition process?

And what your role actually is in the process?

 

If anyone could possible spare a few minutes in helping out a stressed student it will be greatly appreciated

Sam

[Guest MaryEMac]

Hi Sam,

For us, transition means doing everything we can to enable the child to move on to school with the least amount of stress.

It is not just the child who needs to be considered but the parents too, especially if it their first time moving their child to school. As a practitioner I am a buffer between the parents and school, passing on information and helping with their fears and worries.

We are lucky to be on a school site and the headteacher often pops in to see me and always stops to talk to the children. Our children see the reception children playing outside our windows and we can talk about what they are doing and how it will be their turn soon. Both parents and children need to know the name of their teacher, where the classroom is, where the toilets are and where they can hang their coats. Parents need to know where they wait with their child in the morning and where they need to stand when they collect them at the end of school. The playgroup has informal visits to the reception classroom, we borrow some uniform from lost property for dressing up and we turn the home corner into a canteen, after borrowing some meal trays from the school cook. We bring a group of year 5 children into the group so that our children will know some big children in the payground.

Parents also always want to know what their child will need to be able to do before they start school. This will be explained when they meet all the school staff in the summer term and have a tour of the school and try some school dinners. I am always invited to this meeting so that there is a familiar face in the room.

The playgroup and the school produced a joint transition policy which has been favourably received.

I hope this is of some help. Good luck.

 

Mary

[Guest mukerjee1]

Hi to a fellow student (deep within the bowels of E115 at the mo'),

 

We too are situated on a school site (although a PVI setting). This means that the children are already familiar with the school setting, toilets etc.. Although we have seperate transition policies we work very closely with the Reception staff meeting twice (once before, and once after, the reception teachers home visits) in the summer term. Our children attended three morning sessions and two afternoon sessions at school as part of the tranistition process. Photographs of the Reception and other key staff are also displayed in our setting, as are copies of school policies and procedures. We also take the children to have lunch on the school dining room.

 

 

 

Hope this helps.

[Cait]

We have other transitions to consider too, children first starting at Preschool, or school, or nursery need to be helped with that transition, which is the largest they may make - the separation from their primary carer and home. There are smaller transitions which occur in some settings, such as movements from the baby room to the preschool room. I think we wrote a transition policy if it's of any use - bit brain dead just now so sorry if that sounds vague!

[hali]

we are a preschool most of our children feed into one school so we weekly visits if possible the 6 weeks before the end of term. Children go up for lunches, assembles and viits to thier classroom and playground - and meet up with old friends. All the staff take turns to go with them and it works well for us. We then have displays up of piccys taken on visits to talk about at nursery.

[Guest]

Thank you

This will help me today to carry on with the activities for my course,

Interesting reading and provides a great awareness of how important postive smooth transitions should be.

Thanks again

Sam

[Guest]

i think supporting transitions should be a key consideration in Early years. Research shows that if the very first transition for children is successful they are likely to feel less stressed by subsequent transitions (Fabian and Dunlop - Transitions in the Early Years is a useful read).

In my setting - childminder - I use photo's a lot to support transitions. When the children start with me they are given an 'All about my family' book which has photo's of me and my children and lot's of activities we enjoy and places we visit which the family can take home. When they leave my setting I arrange to visit the school or preschool and make a laminated photo book for each child which contains photo's of staff, classroom, classroom routines (such as visual timetable, class teddy, song sheets etc.) I use these books in the setting for storytelling to aid familiarity with their new routines and then the children take them home with them for the parents to use over the summer break. By spending a bit of time in the new setting myself I am able to relay information to the parents about their child's day that might not be covered in the prospectus.

Hope that helps - I think it's a great topic to study! and like Cait says there are other transitions to consider too - children moving between settings is particularly important and also you may need to consider transitions at home that have an impact on development and learning such as divorce, bereavement and birth of a sibling

[Guest]

i think supporting transitions should be a key consideration in Early years. Research shows that if the very first transition for children is successful they are likely to feel less stressed by subsequent transitions (Fabian and Dunlop - Transitions in the Early Years is a useful read).

In my setting - childminder - I use photo's a lot to support transitions. When the children start with me they are given an 'All about my family' book which has photo's of me and my children and lot's of activities we enjoy and places we visit which the family can take home. When they leave my setting I arrange to visit the school or preschool and make a laminated photo book for each child which contains photo's of staff, classroom, classroom routines (such as visual timetable, class teddy, song sheets etc.) I use these books in the setting for storytelling to aid familiarity with their new routines and then the children take them home with them for the parents to use over the summer break. By spending a bit of time in the new setting myself I am able to relay information to the parents about their child's day that might not be covered in the prospectus.

Hope that helps - I think it's a great topic to study! and like Cait says there are other transitions to consider too - children moving between settings is particularly important and also you may need to consider transitions at home that have an impact on development and learning such as divorce, bereavement and birth of a sibling

 

 

Hi,

As a Reception teacher I have tried to support both parents and children through the transition from home/ nursery/ preschool/ childminder into school. We encourage parents to spend time before their child starts in the Reception class so that they have an idea about what goes on and can talk with their child about it. We then have times for children to visit with and without parents in the summer term before they start as well as offering story time for any children who would like to visit every afternoon for a week.

Once we reach September we visit every child at home or they visit in school so we learn more about the individual child and reassure parents etc rather than meeting in a large group. We split the class into 3 groups for their first 2 weeks in school and each group spends 2 morings on their own and thenw e gradually mix in the other children. We have found this helps the children to becoem more familiar with where things are int he room and to start to build relationships between different children and the staff.

When the children stay for lunch (we only have autumn born fullt ime until Christmas) I have introduced a system where the Yr6 or Yr5 children support a pair of Yr R chidlren, showing them the way to the dinner hall, sitting with them, helping open lunch etc and then joining them in the playground to share in their outdoor play. This is especially important for those children who are reluctant or hesitant or slow eaters. Parents have thanked us for settign this system up.

When we get to the second half of the summer term the Yr R children spend time in the Yr1 class and start to become familiar with where things are found in the room and the routines etc in the classroom. We try to provide opportunities for the Yr1 children to revisit Yr R during the autumn term so that they still spend time in familiar surroundings. (This hasn't worked as well this year due to staffing issues and problems in Yr1). We try to encourage all teachers within the school to spend at least one afternoon with their new class before the start of the summer holidays and to encourage children to produce something in their exsting class which can be taken to their new classroom so that it feels slightly more familiar.

 

Hope this helps a bit and makes sense.

 

Nicky Sussex

[Guest cathy m]

Hi Samkellylou

 

I remember E115 very well and did a transitions questionnaire, one aimed at parents and the other for other professionals

 

Cathy

[JacquieL]

Nicky Sussex I think that you have got it right in your setting. I am really impressed and I'm sure your children will benefit from this way of doing things. You are lucky to have an HT who supports this process.

[Guest]

A slightly different preschool PVI perspective: we're not on a school site; there are 4 large primary schools in our town and we're not within safe walking distance of any of them. One year we 'fed' 9 schools in total, with maybe one child going to some of the village schools. We work closely with several of the schools: they visit in the summer term,look at children's records, come to review meetings if the child has specific needs of any sort etc. Materials are being developed to aid successful transition by the local cluster group, such as toys & other resources that are common to both preschool & school settings so that children are familiar with them. The child's entire records of achievements go to the school - we ask parents to sign a consent form for this - and they are returned to parents at an agreed time such as the October half term.

 

Other transitions may include moving to another setting in the same town, which isn't always all that comfortable because of the competition aspect. Cait has mentioned most of the others. One that we do find a bit difficult is when children move soem distance, simply because we feel somewhat limited in terms of what we can do.

 

I hope that's of some use to you. I've tried to be honest about things because it isn't always easy, but we do always try very hard to put the child ad her needs first.

[korkycat]

As a PVI pre-school we feed mainly 2 schools. I volunteer in reception in one of them which makes a lovely link for the children that move on there and am part of a 'cluster' group with the other school. We have developed photo stories of life in reception for both schools and these are shared with the chidren as appropriate. They love looking at them especially after they have had their school visits. They include pictures of school entrance,reception door,coat pegs, toilets, hall, dinner ladies and dinner time plus all the adults they will see regularly. We encourage the reception teachers to visit us but it rarely happens. There are at least 4 pre-schools that feed these schools plus 3 private nurseries and an LEA one so I can see the difficulties for the teachers! We are still developing links with the other pre-schools as some children do attend 2 but this is slow going! korkycat

[Guest]

Hi

It's been a long Christmas trying to update all my EYCLO (new setting and EYFS has not helped)

Anyway could any of you help me with a couple of activities, as my setting does not re-open til Wednesday and I need to keep going.

 

I am trying to find out practitioners view points on what the transition process involves and the his/her role in this process.

 

What the transition involves in a pre-school environment?

What needs to be considered in the transition process?

And what your role actually is in the process?

 

If anyone could possible spare a few minutes in helping out a stressed student it will be greatly appreciated

Sam

Hi i need a bit of help i wondeed if you can give me abit of guidance on EYCLO 8