Susan Posted September 11, 2003 Posted September 11, 2003 HI All & Tamara, How is your playing for year 1 approach progressing? As the Foundation coordinator in my school I have been working with the year 1 teachers to implement a less formal approach. We have the support of our head and the interest of the LEA, as we are the first school to brave enough to stick our necks out and say we are doing this! However, the teachers involved seem to be good at finding problems, have they been stuck in the formal rut for too long? We are a big 90 places per year group school. So 3 classes= 3 teachers, 3 fulltime LSAs, 1 EMAG support teacher & 1 fulltime special needs LSA attached to a child with a statement (physical needs predominantly). Our classrooms are built in pairs, with dividing doors. So, we have a pair of classrooms which have been set up to cross curricular, with tables, carpet spaces, sand& water, role play, art & computers. The single room which is divided from the library/ temp music room, has tables and chairs for 30 and a carpet area. The timetable has been set up to follow a 2 week rotation of teaching spaces to allow either a literacy or numeracy session per class per day in the formal room. PE, library & music times divide the session so that in the longest 1.5 hr slot, no one is table based for more than 1 hour in total. The teachers seem to finding the moving around difficult and asking for more formal slots to allow them to follow a lesson structure more efficiently! I think they need to be thinking team teaching & integrated days and although I have said this, I appreciate that its hard to move away from the "my class, my room", that we're all now so used to. How are you resolving this Tamara? Perhaps your numbers are alot smaller, so the problem doesn't exist? Have you encountered any other problems? Our classrooms are not physically big enough to have 30 children in and be cross curricular. Its an old school (1920s built & presumably modified at some stage with the dividing doors), built to a capacity of 24 children per room, I believe. At the moment I'm off school sick, asthma attack- only the third I've had & not enjoying the experience! Perhaps things have moved on in my absence, although I think its most likely not! I was supposed to welcoming my new class today on a part time provision. I missed the last few home visits yesterday & have been advised not to try to work tomorrow, so trying to keep busy although I've still plenty of paperwork to do. So I guess I'll be in at the deep end on Monday,with problems of my own to resolve! Anyone got any thoughts? Susan
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