Doesn't Take Much, But I Am Confused About Long Term Planning

[Guest]

I am due to start work on Tuesday in a pre-school setting and have spent the past couple of weeks working with my manager to develop a suitable planning system. My manager is keen to use a long term plan, but having read numerous threads on here, I am beginning to worry a little bit that this is not what we should be doing.

 

This is my first real experience of planning within the EYFS since it became statutory. I didn't have to do it at school and in my previous nursery we were trialling it so it is pretty new to me.

 

Should we be using LTPs now or should we just be saying that the EYFS is our LTP. If the latter, I don't understand <wails> Also, I'm a little bit concerned about continuous provision. I keep seeing/hearing these magic words wherever I go. My understanding of CP is that it is basically the areas of provision offered within the setting, where the children have free access to materials or resources, then you add to it your enhancements, which to my mind, would be extra resources or a focus activity. Am I on the right lines here or am I getting it totally wrong? Are these plans supposed to be displayed in the areas or along with the rest of the planning?

 

Can you believe I have a FD in this and still don't really know what I'm doing

 

Maybe I'm overthinking it a bit, but I really want to get this right. I feel a bit silly for asking because I know I should know the answers.

[Guest]

I've attached our long term plan, we didn't use one last year and found we missed out on many learning opportunities...

 

Long term planning

 

At present our long term plans are our continuous provision sheets each member of staff has a copy in their own ‘planning’ folder. The new long term plan adds to the existing continuous provision sheets and includes suggested themes, important dates and activities.

 

Medium term planning

 

The medium term plan uses a loose theme per half term to help resource role play or stories etc. but continues following the children's interests throughout and adapt accordingly. We should think of the ‘themes’ as contexts for learning rather than a topic, which has those connotations of overly adult prescription of the content; all learning, whether self initiated or not exists in some form of context. EYFS is about the balance of adult direction and child initiation too. It's important to ensure children haven't missed out on concepts because they've never been introduced to them or chosen to explore them.

 

Short term planning

 

The short-term planning brings together planning for individual children based on assessments of their development and learning alongside the medium-term plan.

We do not plan for every child, this would be too time consuming and confuse children and adults. We use the unique children and expand their knowledge but being inclusive we expand their learning on to the rest of the children. We aim to observe all the children over a 6-8 week period.

We have a weekly planning meeting, involving the whole team. Practitioners bring their observation records to the planning meeting and we use these as a starting point for the weekly planning to identify and plan for individual children’s interests, learning and developmental needs.

Observations are then fed into the learning journeys as and when time allows during a session as agreed by the Manager or outside the team staffs normal working hours.

 

Deployment of staff around the preschool

 

As a guide, over the course of the week practitioner’s time is spent as follows:

• 2/5 supporting child-initiated play and learning

• 2/5 leading adult-guided activities (including opportunities for guided work in literacy, group and circle times for children aged 3-5)

• 1/5 observing children

 

If one adult is leading an adult-guided activity, at least one other is supporting children’s play or observing.

 

Child initiated play

We cannot plan a learning intention for a child-initiated activity but through observations and adult support of children’s play, we will be able to assess the learning that takes place. Brief notes, which remind us to follow up children’s self-initiated play, can be noted on our planning sheet.

We will then be able to consider appropriate resources that can be added to the continuous provision in order that children can revisit ideas that have been introduced in adult-initiated activities and/or extend their learning.

Where and when possible due to restrictions of the setting, we will endeavour to leave some areas of the provision for children to choose what materials or resources they want: with accessible provision, children will choose what is appropriate to their agenda.

 

Adult guided/Adult led activities

Practitioners need to consider how to differentiate an adult-guided activity, adapting resources, expectations and language in order to take into account the varying ages and stages of development of children in a group.

 

Planned learning intentions should be broad and flexible in order that we can pick up on the child’s own learning agenda. Planned activities need to provide children with lots of opportunities for speaking and listening.

 

We will plan a range of activities across different curriculum areas that have the same broad learning intention, in order that children can encounter this learning or revisit it in different contexts.

 

We will ensure that what is planned is motivating, enjoyable and meaningful: planning must promote a positive disposition to learn in each child.

 

Whole group activities

Children aged 3-4 will have a maximum of 1-2 whole-group sessions each day.

Children need extended periods of time to play and pursue their interests. Children can concentrate for longer in small group activities, where they are more involved.

 

All six areas of learning should be given equal weight and planed for across both the inside and outside environments

Learning and teaching is more effective if provision is mirrored outdoors and indoors. For example “The Three Bears” as an indoors small world scenario is mirrored outdoors as an imaginative role-play opportunity using large apparatus and blocks.

Remember that there are certain activities and experiences that children can only experience outside: e.g.wind, rain, snow and sunshine, looking for minibeasts in the earth, throwing and catching, climbing and swinging etc.

 

Plans are working documents

They are created at the beginning of the week (Wednesday) but can be amended and annotated as the week progresses.

Croft_Preschool_EYFS_Long_Term_Plan.doc

[Guest]

Thanks Carla.

 

I have downloaded your LTP before and actually took it to my manager and suggested we do something similar as I liked the way it linked to the EYFS. I got the impression though that my manager found it a bit difficult to get to grips with, so we have attempted to reach a compromise. Using your LTP as an example, I can see how you would be able to say that the EYFS is your long term plan.

 

The LTP that my manager is keen to use has themes etc and feeds into the MTP and STP but is flexible enough that it allows for individual children's needs and interests to be taken account of, I'm just not sure if that is the right thing to do. I guess there is no real rights and wrongs when it comes to planning.

 

Carla, would you happen to have an example of a CP plan that I could have a look at please?

[Deb]

I've attached our long term plan, we didn't use one last year and found we missed out on many learning opportunities...

 

Long term planning

 

At present our long term plans are our continuous provision sheets each member of staff has a copy in their own 'planning' folder. The new long term plan adds to the existing continuous provision sheets and includes suggested themes, important dates and activities.

 

Medium term planning

 

The medium term plan uses a loose theme per half term to help resource role play or stories etc. but continues following the children's interests throughout and adapt accordingly. We should think of the 'themes' as contexts for learning rather than a topic, which has those connotations of overly adult prescription of the content; all learning, whether self initiated or not exists in some form of context. EYFS is about the balance of adult direction and child initiation too. It's important to ensure children haven't missed out on concepts because they've never been introduced to them or chosen to explore them.

 

Short term planning

 

The short-term planning brings together planning for individual children based on assessments of their development and learning alongside the medium-term plan.

We do not plan for every child, this would be too time consuming and confuse children and adults. We use the unique children and expand their knowledge but being inclusive we expand their learning on to the rest of the children. We aim to observe all the children over a 6-8 week period.

We have a weekly planning meeting, involving the whole team. Practitioners bring their observation records to the planning meeting and we use these as a starting point for the weekly planning to identify and plan for individual children's interests, learning and developmental needs.

Observations are then fed into the learning journeys as and when time allows during a session as agreed by the Manager or outside the team staffs normal working hours.

 

Deployment of staff around the preschool

 

As a guide, over the course of the week practitioner's time is spent as follows:

• 2/5 supporting child-initiated play and learning

• 2/5 leading adult-guided activities (including opportunities for guided work in literacy, group and circle times for children aged 3-5)

• 1/5 observing children

 

If one adult is leading an adult-guided activity, at least one other is supporting children's play or observing.

 

Child initiated play

We cannot plan a learning intention for a child-initiated activity but through observations and adult support of children's play, we will be able to assess the learning that takes place. Brief notes, which remind us to follow up children's self-initiated play, can be noted on our planning sheet.

We will then be able to consider appropriate resources that can be added to the continuous provision in order that children can revisit ideas that have been introduced in adult-initiated activities and/or extend their learning.

Where and when possible due to restrictions of the setting, we will endeavour to leave some areas of the provision for children to choose what materials or resources they want: with accessible provision, children will choose what is appropriate to their agenda.

 

Adult guided/Adult led activities

Practitioners need to consider how to differentiate an adult-guided activity, adapting resources, expectations and language in order to take into account the varying ages and stages of development of children in a group.

 

Planned learning intentions should be broad and flexible in order that we can pick up on the child's own learning agenda. Planned activities need to provide children with lots of opportunities for speaking and listening.

 

We will plan a range of activities across different curriculum areas that have the same broad learning intention, in order that children can encounter this learning or revisit it in different contexts.

 

We will ensure that what is planned is motivating, enjoyable and meaningful: planning must promote a positive disposition to learn in each child.

 

Whole group activities

Children aged 3-4 will have a maximum of 1-2 whole-group sessions each day.

Children need extended periods of time to play and pursue their interests. Children can concentrate for longer in small group activities, where they are more involved.

 

All six areas of learning should be given equal weight and planed for across both the inside and outside environments

Learning and teaching is more effective if provision is mirrored outdoors and indoors. For example "The Three Bears" as an indoors small world scenario is mirrored outdoors as an imaginative role-play opportunity using large apparatus and blocks.

Remember that there are certain activities and experiences that children can only experience outside: e.g.wind, rain, snow and sunshine, looking for minibeasts in the earth, throwing and catching, climbing and swinging etc.

 

Plans are working documents

They are created at the beginning of the week (Wednesday) but can be amended and annotated as the week progresses.

 

 

Carla could not have put it better myself and will help me explain our planning process to parents and staff. Thanks for sharing.

[Guest]

Hi, I use CP from here.... but I'm unsure who's it was so I'll have a look around and refer you.. back later x