Small Reception Classroom Layout Help Please

[Guest]

Hi all,

 

I'm new here and would really appreciate some wisdom.

 

I've just been made the reception teacher in my one form entry school.

 

I've previously taught year 3 and year 2, but this is my first experience of EYFS.

 

I'm really excited about the challenge of learning a new style of teaching and have been spending a lot of time reading up, to try to prepare for September.

 

I'm trying to change the layout of my classroom.

 

It's a small room with a whole wall of windows and another of floor to ceiling cupboards. The room does have an attached outside area, partly covered too, which is lovely.

 

My question is, what would you consider to be the essential areas to have within the classroom and in the outdoor area?

Do I need to have malleable and construction areas inside and out etc?

 

Any advice would be very welcome.

 

Cheers

Laura

 

P.S. Sorry for the long post

[Guest]

Not in a reception class, but we have malluable inside and children are free to take outside if they wish to. We do have construction inside and outside paint outside as well as inside and sometimes role play inside and outside. May be when you start and you know the children you will have more of an idea of their learning style which will guide whether you duplicate inside and outside.

 

How exciting for you, hope you have a lovely year.

[garrison]

a fantastic book to purchase is by Lewisham Early Years Foundation ( I think??) - It is called 'a place to learn' and is my bible. It gives you all the areas of learning and what resources to put in them

[Guest]

Wow, thanks for the quick replies! Will look into that book Rachael, thank you. Dot, cheers for your advice. Will adjust layout and provision once I've got to know the children, just looking for some advice regarding basic layout to put together for the first few weeks. Thanks again for the speedy advice.

[Guest]

I work in nursery not reception but next door to us is the reception class and they have a writing area, a quiet book area a role play area, floor space for construction and there's a bit of a wet area/ messy play area too.

 

Outdoors is a further role play space (a home corner) then water, painting, sand etc.

 

Did you visit the class previously? Did you see how it was set up then? Hopefully the new reception class will have had some transition sessions and will be used to the room as it was, so maybe no huge changes at first? Just time to let the children settle and for you to get to know them.

 

Good luck!

[Guest]

Hi I teach in reception and have a Large classroom (2 old classrooms knocked together) I have in my classroom the following: writing area, maths area, role play, malleable/ fine motor control, construction/ small world play, investigation area, reading corner, creative area. Outside I tend not to have specific areas but all areas of the foundation stage are provided for. Inside I tend to move my areas around to refresh things every half term holidays so my classroom changes quite a bit over the year. I do this to encourage children into the areas I want.

Have fun making your classroom your own!

Debx

[redjayne]

We are Nursery and provide all the usual areas like construction , role play , make and do , book area etc etc as we have two very large rooms and we also provide all 6 areas of learning outdoors as we do free flow - we find that placement and sizes of areas vary from year to year depending on the childrens interests , this year we have had to increase the construction and grapics areas and our Talking table as these were always busy, and the sand and water and malleable were better outdoors than in. We also 'deconstructed' our PSRN area and integrated it with everything else as it just wasn't getting used and the space was better used for other things! I suggest before you set it all firmly just observe your children, and thier interests and see what they do with what you offer, at the beginning of term and build on that ! Half termly area audits are useful to for your communication friendly spaces - finding out where the most 'talking' learning is going on and why ?

[Guest]

Hi I am going to be the year 1 teacher in sept but have been in nursery the past 5 years and worked as a unit for the past year. Our recpetion class in small and they have a mark making area, reading corner, numeracy area, role play area and a carpet area for contruction and small world. They then have access to mallable areas in the nursery area and have sand/water outside alongside other construction and role play areas.