Child-Led Planning For Topic Themes

[Guest]

Hi!

I teach Reception, small class of 21 next year with 1 teacher (2 actually - a new job share partner is coming and 2 TAs). It's an independent school, and rather old school - although we continue to move forward...

 

I want to start the new school year with a revamp. I want to embrace the new EYFS!

 

I want our planning in Topic work to be Child-Led. This gives me the complete heebiegeebies so I am looking for advice.

 

Our topic themes have been set for years. A new topic theme each half term - themes set in advance to avoid clashes with Nursery 1, Nursery 2, Year 1 and Year 2. We have planned the activities we want the children to do mostly under the KUW heading but also some PSED , CLL, CD, PSRN, PD. There are plenty of carpet-times, artefacts, discussion, non-fiction books and stories on the theme but it is entirely adult-led.

 

We have separate teaching times for Phonics, Literacy and Numeracy.

 

I think the topic themes will have to stay - too radical to remove them just yet - but I would like the topic activities to be child-led.

 

Where do I start? I'll ask the chn what they know. There will be loads of discussion.

 

I'll ask them what they want to know. Will there be silence????

 

I'm not sure our topic titles lend themselves to this type of planning!! (All About Me, Opposites, Fairy Tales, Keeping Healthy Keeping Safe, Water, Our Environment)

 

Any advice, you wise people. Pleeeeeeaaaasssee.

 

Will it work. How do you do it?

[Cait]

Hello Pafandral, and welcome.

 

Firstly, it can be a bit 'free-fall' at first, but after you've jumped you can go with the flow! metaphors eh!

 

All about me is an easy one to start with, you can ask children if they'd like to do a self portrait for a gallery so you can get to know them. You can ask for a baby photo from home and then have fun seeing who's who. At this point there's often some discussion going on about growing and so you could start a kind of learning wall about what they already know and take it from there. You could ask what they'd like to find out about - offer some ideas if you like, such as eyes, bones etc and then provide the things you already have for them to work with and do the finding out themselves.

Not knowing how you've worked this in the past it's not easy to advise - and I'm Preschool so I'm working with a year younger age group. I know that mine are very inquisitive just now and we're revisiting something that we already touched on earlier in the year, and extending it now they've moved on a bit and are curious to know more.

Remember that some off these children will have come from settings where they are used to child-led experiences so they could very well show you how it's done! Do you visit their nurseries and preschools? They may have some good advice and you could see it 'in action'

[Guest]

Thanks Cait. (Unfortunately) 19 of 21 are coming from our Nursery where it is pretty much the same as our adult-led has been. Fun stuff but adult-led nonetheless. Actually I have never had to organise the topic before, it has always been the outgoing job share partner.

 

The ideas you have suggested are generally what we have imposed upon them - my family, my birthday, growing up, the senses, my house, self-portraits - one sub-theme each week, teaching/discussion session followed by an adult-directed 'fun' activity on a Friday afternoon.

 

I had thought we'd do a learning wall to start with, to include a display of whatever the chn come up with in CIL.

I thought also to ask the chn what they would like in the role play corner. It is usually a home for a couple of weeks, and then a baby clinic when we talk about growing up/babies/changes etc

 

My worry is that it is going to be so easy to just slip back into imposing adult-led/directed activities! How do I avoid this.

[Cait]

I think sometimes there are times when there needs to be something adult led - how do I know what I need to know? springs to mind.

 

There are ways to make an adult led theme child led if that makes sense. We had a dip in dynamics a few weeks back so I went back to an old theme using We're going on a Bear Hunt, and read the story, putting emphasis on the noises more than usual and the children took it from there. A whispered word in a child's ear 'If you tidy up quickly there'll be time to get the musical instruments out to do Bear Hunt again if you'd like that' and suddenly it's the child's idea! Sneaky, I know, but there are times ..... Sometimes a child will come in with a 'Wow' slip to say they've got a new pet and that can spark a lot of interest. You need to go with the idea that there can be huge interest for one or maybe two days and then it drops, and something else picks up. I learned my lesson a few years back when children suddenly got interested in cats, after one of them got a new one. We had a tremendous wall and all learned together about cats, we spent a great week finding out things together and at the weekend I went out and got lots of 'dog' stuff ready, but they didn't want to know about dogs, a casual remark from me about lions and tigers being cats on the Friday had set them all to finding out about those! We had another week and the learning was pitched really high, they were remembering far more than I expected and reeling out facts about servals and lynxes etc. It was tremendous. At the start of the following week, I got the dog and some wolf stuff out - nope, now it was sharks because they'd been fascinated about the lions teeth!

What I'm saying is that there'll be dips of interest, when they are 'resting' and periods of intense learning where you'll find it hard to keep up! But that's the joy of child-led learning!

[Guest]

Yes 'How do they know what they need to know?'

 

As I don't think the management will be up for chucking out the pre-set Topics, we are going to end up with adult-initiated child-led topics. But not to worry, that is progress for us. Rome wasn't conquered in a day and all that.

 

So, we brainstorm the new topic area and make a kind of mind map for the learning wall. Adults set the theme going with a teaching time and an activity plus resources for CIP. We have materials available for CIP to support the theme. Then we watch and see where the chn's enthusiasm takes us for the next week and the next week. Adding to the learning wall as we go along.

 

We do inform parents of our overall topic plus the theme for the following week, plus Literacy and PSRN themes, in a news letter. We never get much in - we will have to positively encourage that for Topic show and tell. I want to raise the profile of speaking and listening next year too so that would be ideal. Perhaps also we could send home a copy of the mindmap to get parents/children talking and thinking. Maybe they will, maybe they won't!

 

(It's interesting how parents expectations of how they should be involved are changing the longer there has been a 0-5 curriculum. We had Open Morning for prospective families yesterday and there were several questions about how often would they get to see learning journals and talk with their child's key-worker. Five years ago, parents didn't ask that. They didn't know they should.)

 

Am I getting the hang of it?

[Cait]

Oh it sounds like it!

[Guest]

Not so scary as I thought then.

 

Tick that revamp.

Next issue....

 

Thank you.

[Guest ShelleyT]

We have started sending home a topic related sheet for parents to write on during the first week of each half term. It gives them an opportunity to talk to their children about the topic and discuss ideas and the children feel like they have some ownership of the topic. We collect the sheets in at the end of the first week and then plan from that, along with our own adult led ideas each week. Remember that 50% of the children's learning SHOULD be adult led according to the EYFS. We do not have a set focus for each week so that we can continue from the previous week if necessary. Does that make sense? So, for example, this term the topic is dinosaurs. Last Monday we sent home the sheet. For the rest of the week we introduced the topic and discussed issues. On Friday we collected the sheets in and made a plan for this week based on some of their ideas and our own activities. On Friday we will plan for next week, either continuing from this week if the children are still interested in dinosaur bones and movement, or moving on to a different area that they have become interested in. Hope that helps!

[Guest]

I like the topic sheet idea to send home

 

I still can't get past 'how do they know what they don't know'. My husband keeps asking how we are going to find out how big dinosaurs were if that is what they want to know?!? It'll be a book.

 

Or maybe I am not teaching them about 'dinosaurs' or whatever per se but offering exciting activities on the theme of dinos with Learning Intentions from other curriculum areas - build a shelter for dinos from the recycled materials alongside a small group of classmates etc

 

Just back from a 'New EYFS' course. It was good but my head is FULL.

[Guest ShelleyT]

That's exactly it. Teaching them about the actual dinosaurs is a bonus. It is really just a theme to use to help with other learning outcomes. For example, we are doing some maths comparing lengths of dinosaurs, labelling them in writing, making them from all sorts of resources. The children had some lovely ideas, especially for things to go in the sand tray, or creative activities, but most of the adult led activities will still be ideas from the teachers because the children don't know what they need to learn next in terms of the EYFS! Does that make sense?

[Guest]

Thank you, Shelley T - yes it makes sense.

 

I 'm wondering if my management team will let me scrap the pre-imposed and carefully devised topic themes. Hmmm....

[Guest]

Hello,

 

Not sure if this will help as you have some fab advice already but thought I would share anyway!

 

We have been working really hard on this at my school it has been the same for years adult focussed, structured and to be honest boring! I started as the new FS lead 8 weeks ago and we have changed so much since then! we have introduced 'our learning journey walls' and plan almost 100% from children's interests in Nursery and Reception.

 

We begin with a theme (thats the almost bit!) and we begin with what we call a WOW work activity - basically an engagement task to the topic- visit from a pirate, video msg, letter, treasure hunts, mysterious box arriving etc... to promote discussion this then goes on to the learning journey wall and we then leave post it notes (reception) and invite children to write down what they would like to learn about next in the form of questions, we then plan from this, throughout the week we complete our observations and adapt planning as we go along and if children are showing no interest we scrap the theme and go with what they are showing an interest in i.e: they didnt like gardening but were obsessed with water so we did a car wash etc.. they planned it and cleaned adults cars, using posters, money, went to the shop to buy sponges etc..

 

In Septemeber we are having a learning journey for home and for school which will include a sheet for parents telling them our topic and suggested activities to do but also includes a space for them to tell us what their child is interested in learning about, any work we will do in school from the parents ideas will go on display (on a window) for parents to see, so they know it is valued.

 

we know we still need to develop this but this is where we are up to, and the children are loving it

 

Hope that helps x