Foundation Units

[Guest]

Can I ask all those currently working in foundation units if they teach P.E. as a discret lesson in their school hall for example.

Also do people have Nursery and Reception divided into say colour groups for certain activities and how do you stop them all and gather the separate groups together and move them to a certain area without wasting alot of time or going looking for individual children.

One more question - what do you do after Easter because at my school the Reception children are expected to have a Literacy and Numeracy hour.

Thank you - all comments are gratefully received.

[Magenta]

I was about to ask the same question about Literacy and Numeracy Gwen! Though I don't think we'll start until after half term at the earliest. Any suggestions as to how people cope with this would be gratefullu recieved.

 

We do have discrete hall time sessions - we separate Nur and Rec at the moment, we did try mixing but it didn't work for our children.

 

We do have family groups - these are for circle time 2 mornings and 2 afternoons, and for Rec. when Nur. have left in the morning. It's not too time consuming as these are either at the beginning of the session or after tidy-up - then all chn. get together.

 

Apart from ICT suite and music we don't split into groups for anything else it's just free-flow play.

[Guest]

I work as part of a foundation stage unit and teach PE in the school hall for 30 mins each week. I also use the ICT room. The children love PE and the highlight for them is changing into their PE kit. We have five rooms in the unit and the Reception classes are based in the Litercay and Numeracy rooms. When we teach the 'hours' these room are closed off from the nursery children. We always ensure that there are litercy / numeracy type activities are available in the other three rooms. We then change rooms in the afternoon to teach the other 'hour'. The remaining part of the day is free flow play and the N and R children mix. I will say thet the children love working in their home groups and ten minutes is often long enough for them!

[Guest]

Hi Gwen,

in our unit we go over to main school building for p.e and music (both nursery and reception) reception also do gym in summer term and ict suite. Reception are in animal groups acccording to literacy ability so we gather them up like this for guided reading which works well because they get to know their groups quickly and go and get each other but isn't always appropriate to use these groups and mostly have mixed ability where by we just make our way down a list and it is very time consuming-especially near the end of the activity when I have to go off/or send chn off looking for certain children! However, its not too bad because an adult focus may follow a whole class group session in which case I will tell the children who I would like to work with next. We are COMPLETETLY mixed unit which has its advantages/disadvantages. School aren't being strict by saying 'do the hour by summer term' but pressure is felt-eg year 1 teacher saying 'they've got to learn to sit for longer periods of time at some point' but LEA say as long as elements of hour are in place we don't have to do the hours. I'd like to know what's best but to be honest It seems daft working an integrated day all of autumn/spring term and then suddenly changing things to get them 'ready' for year 1-the 6 weeks holidays are so long they've forgotten it all anyway and our lea are recommending that year1 teachers do their autumn terms like a reception class.

[Magenta]

Zim, How many teacher led activities do you have running each week?

It is really difficult when there are so many children to get through!!

This is an area we are looking at at the moment.

After Easter we will have 114 chn. to get through as we will have 30 Nursery both a.m and p.m.!

[Susan]

I dont work in a FS unit but whatever happened to transition to KS1? I firmly believe that the children should be working in an integrated fashion throughout the reception year and yr1 should be more play/ activity based to allow the pulling together of all the elements in the Autumn term.

[Guest]

We have a"physical" session every am and pm for the whole unit. This is dance based but with elements of yoga and T'ai Chi- and lots of ralaxation. Everyone goes in the am but rec don't have to in the pm but we do target children who benefit from more physical acts. We work a lot on building core strength- they'll never sustain the rigours of sitting for literacy hour without it!!! We the have a 30/40 minute slot a week for more formal gym and games activities where we work as rec and nursery. We are lucky to get the hall each day- the joys of a unit the rest of the school goes out to play and we grab the hall!

I am getting together some info about our physical activities and promise to post them up. I believe physical is so important to well being and learning.

lucyd

[Guest]

Magenta, its hard to be specific but each member of staff focuses for half a day each day so we 'get through' as many as we can in our focus time. This week for example (I'll attach the plan actually) all reception children will (hopefully!) have had a guided read and write each, 1 maths (the measuring height) plus a cross curricular maths (as we were focusing on the weight language during structured play in clinic) plus 1/2 creative (observational drawings-which they didn't all do as I was out Mon-) and mothers day cards. They get an extra reading session (with boooks they take home) and all play key words lotto. I've been through it so many times-counting up the hours/time it will take to do a AF session to work out how each child can get what they're entitled to but it can change week by week to be honest. Our FS consultant advised us on this-i've got a sheet somewhere which lays out what they're entitled to if you want me to dig it out but we're not sticking to the AF exactly as she advised as things like dance/music (where we go over to main school building) take a lot longer than the consultant would be happy with but its just the coming and going element that takes time-we don't want to cut our 1/2 hour lessons down as the children are really benefitting from them and can't wait to go over.

How about you? How many staff will you have for your 114?

Short_term_plan_of_focused_activities.doc

[Guest]

that was 1 or 2 creative and half an hour dance lesson! Just read back and I'd put 1/2 for both!

[Magenta]

Thanks for that Zim, I would be grateful if you could find out that sheet on entilement from your advisor - we have had very little support from LEA and never seen this written down!!

I suppose when I add it up the children are doing a lot really, it just seems lik a production line at times!

How about your Nursery children? Do they have similar activities?

Thankfully after Easter there will be 84 per session (114 is the number of chn. altogether a.m and p.m.) - staffing will therefore stay at 7.

[Guest]

yes I too would be interested in looking at the information sheet on what the children are entitled to

[Guest]

Hi guys, thought this might interest you.

 

We had an advisor in this week, and they gave us a lot to think about most of which we agreed with.

 

However the biggest point they made was that we had over timetabled staff and we're doing too much adult led activities and we should be actually playing more along side the kids rather than directing them. When we questioned them more we were told not to 'prepare the nursery for reception' and not to 'prepare reception for year 1' and did it matter whether all the children had painted a picture or played with the construction especially if they had been engrossed in playing with something else? We thought we had been 'flexible' and provided activities which were child initiated - but when we stood back and looked they weren't completely! We aren't sure where to go next with this and it has caused people to become more sensitive about what and how they are doing things, especially since Ofsted thought we were good (3 weeks into being a unit!), but what they said did make good sense.

[Guest]

Hi Magenta,

Can't find it at the moment but I will try and dig it out-think it was 1 guided read, 1 g-write and one other cll plus 2 maths and 1-2 other(ie kuw/creative) but this seems far too much to me and since this they have advised us that the guidlines have changed again (ie you don't have to do g-write every week as long as you're doing daily modelled writing and providing plenty of writing opportunities accross the areas and that the other maths can be cross curricular. ) I'm starting to feel less guilty now that I don't get things 'done' as, like Kavmar says, we should be spending more time playing along side them/developing language etc (I'm just not quite there yet!)

I will dig it out though when I can

[Magenta]

It does seem rather a lot Zim!!

We've also found that with the better weather free-flow play is happening more, so its impossible to 'get through' everybody!

I am really encouraged by your post Kavmar! I keep getting drawn to thinking we should be doing things more formally for Reception - now you've pulled me back - Thanks!

[Guest]

Hi Magenta and Gwen. It was more or less what I'd said.

Coverage for a class of 30 reception: Adult focus activities over the week would include 5 guided reading,(1 per child in a group of 6) 10 maths(2 AF for each child) and 10 other cll which could include guided writing, speaking and listening, phonics or structured play. It wasn't specific about how many AF for the other 4 areas but said that daily circles should include literacy, numeracy and reviews/periods of reflection with KUW , PSE and creative beiing alternated as appropriate. Thats just one authority's point of view thiough not national guidlines and like I said, they've since said we don't have to do guided writing every week and that the second maths af could be cross curricular (but it probably would be anyway I would have thought?). It would be good to see some national guidlines like the dfee produced for literacy and numeracy in reception but it feels like everythings up in the air at the moment. How much of your day do you spend managing child initiated play? My colleague (who is the nursery teacher) hates doing this and feels she should be 'working with kids'. I try and stick up for it and say its great to just watch what they get up to and observe their play/intervening and extending their lanquage, asking an open ended question or whatever where appropriate. She says she would enjoy it if this were the case but says its not like this in reality-instead she's sorting out problems/telling off children who are doing what they shouldn't be!

Incidently, we have a new member of staff who is an experienced ks1 teacher but has never taught for a long period of time in reception. When I asked her to 'manage' a particular room the other day (as another member odf staff was already doing an adult focus in there) she commented that the time had gone really slow and that she could have'got through' 2 guided reading sessions in this time! What do I say to that? Its hard to get people round to our way of thinking when their isn't the time in the day. Any advice? I was thinking of sheets in each area with examples of questions we could ask the children but I'm not sure if this is a bit contrived. It would be good for new people and students as it would give them some good ideas for quality interaction-eg in the consruction "What could you do to make your wall stronger?" (that's just off the top of my head but you know the kind of thig I mean) but I don't want people to think they always need to be doing this-standing back and observing is often better than charging in with a question!

[Guest]

Hi Folks

 

I work in a reception class and we have been doing numeracy and literacyy hour since October. We also get changed for PE and go to the gym. We are work complatly sepreate from FS1. We do literacy in the morning all morning and maths in the afternoon. As i workk as TA i just follow the routine and planning but i work with a group and the teacher works a group as teacher led and we have two groups working independantly. They swop over after breaktime but we keep the groups we have got all day. Mad i know but that is how we do it. There is some freeplay but may be not as much as there should be.

Blue

[Guest]

I think I would be blue too!! Sounds like Y2 to me