All Around The World Topic

[Guest]

Hi,

 

I have posted before and your comments/replies have always been helpful and reassuring, so I thought rather than sit at home panicking, I'd turn to you all again for guidance etc.

 

I am attempting to get ahead so that I can spend half term sorting reports and hopefully relaxing a bit (it's crazy as its May and I am battling with a nasty cold) with ideas for next half term.

 

I am an NQT and find the concept of planning completely from children's interest for focused activities daunting (especially due to the nature of my school set up) and I am unsure how to tackle it ( I went on a course last week, but came away more confused and unsure how to tackle it all). Also my school at the start of the year gave me set topics to follow for each half term, most of which I have managed to adapt to me and my class. For the last half of this year, my topic is to be 'All around the world' and I am struggling to decide which direction to take it.

 

We have already done a bit about the world in terms of animals and as I've been fortunate to travel a bit during the holidays (family live abroad) so have shared my experiences with the children so certain aspects have already been covered. We have also talked about how to care for our world - children inspired such discussions. I feel my children will enjoy this topic as they love asking me about Australia and other places I have visited and love looking at our atlas in the book corner or elsewhere in the class and sharing their knowledge about the world and their holidays.

 

I am considering looking at it from the point of view of finding out where they have been on holidays/in our world to personalise it to them and then maybe look at how we can travel around the world (the boys love making and talking about trains/planes/boats etc - thought would incorporate such interests into our role-play area). I will talk to the children about it to get their ideas as well as they are often extremely more inspiring and creative than me. I was thinking of then spending a couple of weeks looking at different countries - maybe hot places and cold places and looking at what different types of holidays we can take in a country - also to compare such countries to ours. I thought to finish it off it would be nice to find out where the children would like to visit after having travelled around a bit of the world.

 

Any help to resolve my confusion/lack of confidence etc would be gratefully received.

 

Many thanks in anticipation,

 

Becky

[Susan]

Becky I think that you have more than a good basis on which to base that topic. Dont forget about some map making---journey from home to school maybe and look at the sense of place ELG to help you.

 

Good luck.

[Guest lou73]

Hi

What about having food from around the world the children could try different foods from different countries i.e. pizza and pasta from italy, noodles, rice and crackers from china etc.....

 

 

In terms of child initiated learning i have started recently to talk to the children about the next topic of learning and asking them for their input......by creating a mind map of their ideas. I have just done this for the topic of famous bears with some truely amazing results - they told me they wanted a bear hospital role play area, to make maps showing the way to place where we will be having our teddy bear picnic.

 

Hope this helps

[Shiny]

I love the whole food idea. I learn so much better when food is involved!!!!!

 

Perhaps you could look at the same type of food from different countries like breads or chesses. Mmmm bread and cheese!!!

[Guest]

In the resources section there is detailed topic planning for 'All around the world'. We are currently using the farm planning as a starting point for us and its been really usefu as are many other items in the resource files.I believe theres one more set of planning to be added and I'm looking forward to reading it.

 

All around the world planning