Foundation Unit Organisation

[Guest]

Hi there everybody,

 

I'm an NQT in my second term in Nursery, and I have just been told (very exciting) that i will be the only teacher in the foundation unit as from this September along with 2 full time teaching assistants. I am really excited about this new position and added responsibility, but...How will i organise the setting. I will only have 8 children in reception, but up to 30 in nursery, split into 3 hr sessions am & pm. Any advice from you guys would be very much appreciated.

 

Thakyou very much

 

Misspink

xx

[Guest]

Welcome to the forum Misspink!

 

Congratulations - how exciting for you! It is always hard to know how best to organise things so I can understand your concerns. Are the 8 in reception children currently in the nursery? Is it the only intake or will you get more during the year?

 

My personal feelings on how you organise the day would be to run things very similarly to nursery as the EYFS way of doing things will be effective for the reception children also. As they are all working within the same curriculum it should in theory be quite easy. I suppose the main thing to consider is to ensure there are extra challenges for the older children although that doesn't always follow. When you are planning a lot of the nursery children will fit in the 40-60+ stage of development anyway. By planning with this in mind it will ensure that the year R children are being taught at the appropriate level. I do think it is important that the year r children have some group times just for them though - they could also be given some appropriate responsibilities to make a clear distinction.

 

I hope this has been of some help.

 

Good luck

[Guest]

Aaaah thanks heaps for that.

 

Yeah the 8 chn are some of them from F1 that will be going up into F2 and the only intake, a great little bunch. I feel so so lucky just to have eight in reception, oooooh very exciting.

 

Great advice for the planning. As I understand then, basically go off the 40 - 60months stage of development and just differentiate for F1 accordingly.

Fab idea aswell, giving F2 added responsibilities, making them feel grown up and super special.

 

 

How sad am i on a Friday night, still thinking about work (ha ha).

 

 

Thankyou heaps for your advice.

Misspink xx

[Guest]

Hi misspink,

I run the foundation unit within our school.

For planning, I do different outcomes for the F1 and F2, so they will be doing the same activity but the older ones will be working towards a different scale point. Actually they are very similar, just worded differently!

They are split into two groups for literacy and numeracy, but all other activities are carried out together.

The older ones love helping the younger ones, and will always let me know if they are doing something they shouldn't!

I give the older ones 'jobs' to do, eg heping with the fruit, fetching the milk, taking messages along the corridor to the year 1 teacher, but best of all they like tidying 'the other room'. (they can't be seen unless you are in there with them!)

 

There have been 8 reception children and 12 younger ones this year, and it's worked really well.

 

Congratulations on your teachers post, and welcome to the forum, always lots of help and advice here

 

jackie.

[ChrisAR]

Hi there

 

Wow, 8 Reception!

 

We currently have a 90 place Unit although at the mo we have some vacancies and our highest numbers are in the AM session which has 68 children.

 

Good luck with your Unit, you will probably find that everyone seems to have a different opinion on how it should be run. Depends on your philosophy - I'm very much into child initiated learning using the plan, do and review process based on High/Scope. High/Scope has had some bad press over the years - but only because it wasn't done properly in most settings - but I'm still, (9 years after I first moved into Reception), passionate about it. It really is just good, solid early years practise. Take a look at the book 'Educating Young Children' by Mary Hohmann and David Weikart.

 

We still have adult directed activies to teach identified skills and Reception have 15mins phonics and 15mins maths once Nursery go home. Reception also have their collective worship in the Unit.

 

I've noticed that in some Units staff still make a heavy distinction between N and R, and R will get all the focus whilst N are left to get on with it. I've told my staff to ensure that all children receive the same opportunities and the same attention.

 

Good luck, you've got a Unit. Celebrate it!

[Guest]

Wow!!! Thankyou all for your advice and support, I will take it all on board, great ideas regarding giving the F2 children added responsibility, and thankyou aswell for making it clearer to me about the assessment scales being very much the same. I'm very excited about it becoming much more of a unit. A great challenge ahead...and to know that there is a wealth of knowledge and experience from you guys makes the whole trhing seem alot less daunting.

 

I can't thankyiu all enough.

 

Enjoy the long weekend

 

 

Misspink xx

[Guest]

Hi there everybody,

 

I'm an NQT in my second term in Nursery, and I have just been told (very exciting) that i will be the only teacher in the foundation unit as from this September along with 2 full time teaching assistants. I am really excited about this new position and added responsibility, but...How will i organise the setting. I will only have 8 children in reception, but up to 30 in nursery, split into 3 hr sessions am & pm. Any advice from you guys would be very much appreciated.

 

Thakyou very much

 

Misspink

xx

Hi i'm in the same situation as you- very excitied but also very nervous, i have only taught nursery so i'm worried about how i am going to fit everything in as i find the days fly by already.

I will also have 8 reception children and 10 nursery children for the first term, i will have another 2 small nursery intakes during the year (this is also worrying as last year i had a little girl who screamed every time i wasn't focused on her for the first 4 weeks, which completely tied me up, the teaching ass. was left to deal with taking children to the toilet- outside nursery room & squabbles - so no focus activities completed and no observations done).

Can i ask how big will your room be? will you be able to separate the nursery & reception children for literacy/numeracy sessions- i have visited a couple of units and they do this, there is only free flow at certain times in the day. I will only have one room which isn't really very big, so i will not be able to do this.

[Guest]

Hi i'm in the same situation as you- very excitied but also very nervous, i have only taught nursery so i'm worried about how i am going to fit everything in as i find the days fly by already.

I will also have 8 reception children and 10 nursery children for the first term, i will have another 2 small nursery intakes during the year (this is also worrying as last year i had a little girl who screamed every time i wasn't focused on her for the first 4 weeks, which completely tied me up, the teaching ass. was left to deal with taking children to the toilet- outside nursery room & squabbles - so no focus activities completed and no observations done).

Can i ask how big will your room be? will you be able to separate the nursery & reception children for literacy/numeracy sessions- i have visited a couple of units and they do this, there is only free flow at certain times in the day. I will only have one room which isn't really very big, so i will not be able to do this.

Oooooh its all very confusing this Foundation unit stuff. Have you seen there are other threads from people in similar positions, under foundation organisation i think. Yeah my room can close off to nursery chn, so i will be able to do more focussed activities with F2. But i do have a child who just misses joining F2 by three days already knows most of her letters, numbers to 20 etc, so will plan my pnonics and probably numeeacy in the afternoons as she attends then. Both rooms are fairly big, but at the moment I have alot of the F2 chn coming into F1 when its there free choice as i have more of the creative learning in my room.....water, sand, construction, collage etc so next year i will be balancing the areas a bit more. I'm kind of there with organising the day, but as for observations and feeding them into the following weeks planning....its still all a mind field. Glad to hear you are in a similsr oisition to me. Will get chatyting hey and any sudden ideas of inspiration with all the answers, we will have to let all know. Any other stuff you wanna ask, ill do my best to answer

 

xx

[Guest]

Oooooh its all very confusing this Foundation unit stuff. Have you seen there are other threads from people in similar positions, under foundation organisation i think. Yeah my room can close off to nursery chn, so i will be able to do more focussed activities with F2. But i do have a child who just misses joining F2 by three days already knows most of her letters, numbers to 20 etc, so will plan my pnonics and probably numeeacy in the afternoons as she attends then. Both rooms are fairly big, but at the moment I have alot of the F2 chn coming into F1 when its there free choice as i have more of the creative learning in my room.....water, sand, construction, collage etc so next year i will be balancing the areas a bit more. I'm kind of there with organising the day, but as for observations and feeding them into the following weeks planning....its still all a mind field. Glad to hear you are in a similsr oisition to me. Will get chatyting hey and any sudden ideas of inspiration with all the answers, we will have to let all know. Any other stuff you wanna ask, ill do my best to answer

 

xx

[Guest]

Oooooh its all very confusing this Foundation unit stuff. Have you seen there are other threads from people in similar positions, under foundation organisation i think. Yeah my room can close off to nursery chn, so i will be able to do more focussed activities with F2. But i do have a child who just misses joining F2 by three days already knows most of her letters, numbers to 20 etc, so will plan my pnonics and probably numeeacy in the afternoons as she attends then. Both rooms are fairly big, but at the moment I have alot of the F2 chn coming into F1 when its there free choice as i have more of the creative learning in my room.....water, sand, construction, collage etc so next year i will be balancing the areas a bit more. I'm kind of there with organising the day, but as for observations and feeding them into the following weeks planning....its still all a mind field. Glad to hear you are in a similsr oisition to me. Will get chatyting hey and any sudden ideas of inspiration with all the answers, we will have to let all know. Any other stuff you wanna ask, ill do my best to answer

 

xx

 

Lucky you having two rooms, i think that is my major concern-trying to carry out more focused activities with the reception children. Have you worked out how you're going to organise your timetable, How much free flow, CI play have you time tabled into your am and pm sessions?

Also are you going to have a snack time or rolling snack, i'm hoping to stick with snack time as i feel it is a good opportunity to develop the childrens social skills and manners, a lot of the children in my catchment don't have family meals at the table so i feel this is really important for them.

[Guest]

Lucky you having two rooms, i think that is my major concern-trying to carry out more focused activities with the reception children. Have you worked out how you're going to organise your timetable, How much free flow, CI play have you time tabled into your am and pm sessions?

Also are you going to have a snack time or rolling snack, i'm hoping to stick with snack time as i feel it is a good opportunity to develop the childrens social skills and manners, a lot of the children in my catchment don't have family meals at the table so i feel this is really important for them.

 

Hiya again, i tried today to sort out a timetable...just so its a bit clearer in my head. Ive done a draft copy, but have now realised it needs to be so much more detailed i.e fitting in times for shared reading, writing, guided reading/writing etc, along with fitting in KUW, Creative etc. Its mind boggling isnt it.

I'm with you on the snack thing...like your chn ours are the same, i would doubt very much they sit at a table. I see it as a social occasion aswell.

 

I think for me i'm trying to get the whole classs together 3/4 times a day no more trhan 15mins a time, and then when they are in C.I activities do small group work then with them. I've also got a littlen who will be in nursery but misses joining the f2 lot by three days, so as she knows all her letters already have timetabled Letters and Sounds in the afternoon as thats when she comes in.

 

I'm also trying to view it as a unit rather than F1 & F2, and integrating them all together. But i do think that i'll defo put them into keyworker groups, then the NURSERy nurses can take small groups aswell. I'm also thinking that when reception have circle time/music, i'll plan for Nursery nurses to take that responsibility and then i can give f1's some focus time.

 

I'll try and attatch my timetable to yuo, hope it works, ive never done this before. its just a rugh one for now tho, needs loads of tweaking.

Keep in touch great to bounce ideas from each other.

[Guest]

trying again with the timetable

[Beau]

trying again with the timetable

 

Hi,

 

Do you get an error message when you try to upload the timetable or not? If we know what the problem is we can maybe help you to solve it.

[Guest]

No i'm not getting an error message at all.

 

Im hitting the browse icon, finding the appropriate file, and ten hitting upload. I cant see any other way of figuring it out.

 

Ahh Ive just tried again, its in publisher and it has said thast you are not permitted to upload this type of file. Will convert it tmoorow into word, that mite work. Thanks for all your help out there xx

[Beau]

Glad you've solved the problem and hope you manage to upload it successfully.