Oh Dear, Please Help Me I Am So Confused!

[Guest]

hi all, after a year or so away from here due to EYPS (which i gained) i have suddenly been propelled into acting leader from assistant and have two new limited experienced members of staff to work with, i have so many ideas in my head about the planning and keyworker, i have inherited a multitude of problems, more of which are appearing daily (i worked with these people for 10 years and am amazed at what has come out). anywyas back to the point:

 

the planning is a mess - no child led at all and not for the new eyfs, very strict themes and a craft a day that 99% didnt enjoy(which is so gone along with the worksheets that kept appearing!)

keyworker - ok not great but was not informing the planning at all

 

tbh i am so confused by the planning, well not confused i understand OAP etc, but am worrying, and after reading so many posts on here im not sure which way to turn!!

 

right, here is what im wondering -

what planning docs do you all use? is it long, medium and short term?

i have been asked to produce a year long, budgeted curriculum plan by my committee, was considering giving them the EYFS and saying there you go thats it, any ideas on this?????

how do you record individual children led?

 

do people use tracker booklets/docs for keyworker where you date and say what kind of evidence you have?

 

oh dear this is a nervous ramble, just had so much to content with in the past 3 weeks that i am doubting myself over stuff i know i am more than capable of doing!

 

thanks for reading my rant

[Guest]

forgot to say we do progress summaries, 1 per child per term, the trouble is we have approx a dozen children each and they are good, well not to sound to big headed but the parents of my keychildren loved mine, however we had complaints about the ones from the two now left members of staff.

[Guest]

Oh i had to chuckle when i read this because i have spent the entire summer hols trying to revamp all our planning and observations in time for September and the new EYFS and your post echoed my words exactly ! :blink:

 

I have downloaded and printed off so many wonderful ideas from here, but still feel like i am no further forward :huh: .

 

I am sorry i have no other words of wisdom, but there are many wonderful people on here with lots more logic than i have on how to organise everything that i am sure will come forward with lots of ideas, i will follow your thread with interest :1b

[Fredbear]

Firstly congratulations on your EYPS. Like any changes it takes time to get your head round them and see what best fits your provision and practice. I too have taken many ideas from this fantastic forum alongside our current working and are going to run with it for the first term and tweak if need be. I personally think this is how our provisions should run, so it is not set in stone and becomes stagnant and uninspiring. Pre EYFS we had a long term plan and then weekly planning sheets. From September we shall still have a long term plan, but weekly planning will be more about the keyperson and their child's interests as to what will evolve. That said we will have out core provision each session and certainly for the first couple of weeks it will be about settling and getting to know all our new children. As well as welcoming all our returning children 60 in all. Good luck .

[Guest]

thanks for the support! what are peoples thougths on pre determined topics? i know what i think but just wonder

[Melcatfish]

thanks for the support! what are peoples thougths on pre determined topics? i know what i think but just wonder

 

We have a range of topics which we may or may not use throughout the year but they are all quite broad so that they can be adapted to the childrens interests for example Construction & Machines as a topic has ended up with focus' on robots, transport, building sites, inventors and inventions etc... so although we usually offer up the topic as a starting point the children very much take it in their own direction so my medium term plan has a selection of possible activities and enhancements but it is a working document and we are constantly adding, changing and evolving it to suit the childrens interests. When I started in the nursery class the previous teacher had a very detailed long term 2 year rolling plan of precisely what topic and activities would happen when. Our school does use themes \ topics so I feel our method fits in with our schools general approach but is flexible and allows me to give significant control over the direction of the learning to the children.

 

Good luck with your new role, it sounds like it is a mixture of very exciting and very daunting!

 

Mel

[Guest]

We dont us pre determined topics but tend to go on childrns curernt interests. We do have areas we want to cover eg winter or spring but we wold do a mind map to see what the children are interested in, where their gaps in the learning are and what they already know.

 

I have a long term plan but that tends to be yearly planner for the setting of what needs doing, eg appraisals, fire drills, policy reviews etc

 

I dont use medium, waste of time

 

I use a weekly provisional plan

 

My staff keywork on a set day and plan individually for each of their children

[purplewednesday1]

We have along term plan, like Suer - it also has any festivals that are relevant to our children ... we don't do festivals that no children are celebrating (we had a big Eid celebration but won't be doing Divali for example - although we might do it if / when we get into work about light)

We have a loose two weekly plan - which is themed (ish) and is based around several books (fiction and non fiction) - we have found that this gives a 'Monday morning starting point' and then it goes off wherever the children take it. Our planning in practise has a bit of a 'Chinese whispers' effect .... we give the children a launch (from the story - or from a short flim clip - or from a piece of music etc) then we have activites up our sleeve if we need them - but if the children want to take the focus activty somewhere else then we do that. Our continous provision is always available too, plus our activites that the children have chosen from visual prompt cards (so children might choose to have shaving foam or ice cubes out - they select these weekly so that we have a chance to get them ready)

Our preschool group might, during a keyperson time be doing the following:

8 children = 1 L3 qualified

3 children doing activity planned by keyperson - which is adapted 'on the hoof' by the KP as they see who they are working with and what that particular child needs to move them forward. KP will plan activity to appeal to different children through the week - or all of them, it's up to the children

4 children doing 'freeplay' accessing continuous provision

1 child accessing 'time to play' activity e.g ice cubes, foam

The KP will then feed into the planning for subsequent weeks about what their particular group needs

 

KP keeps post it note obs which are uploaded to PRAMs to give progress overviews and next steps

 

pw

[sw1]

Hi there All,

 

I have been trying to get my head around the new EYFS and how if will affect planning etc. I have been working on some bits which I have attached and hope they might help some of you out? I have picked up some great stuff via this forum and felt it high time I returned the favour!!!!

 

If anyone has any comments or suggestions for these would be glad to hear them (as long as they are not too harsh?!!!)

 

Good luck to you all on the start of a new academic year!!!

New EYFS Development table.doc

small obs sheet for new EYFS.doc

New EYFS Weekly Overview - blank.docx

New EYFS Daily plan - blank.docx

[flowlow]

thanks for the support! what are peoples thougths on pre determined topics? i know what i think but just wonder

 

Hi when I took over at my setting they had a very strict two year rolling programme which we got rid of. We then tried out focusing on an area each half term but found this didn't work well for us, not even following the children's interests. We would sometimes have linked activities with the school and felt that our children weren't getting the best from them as they were not following the same topics. We then had a try with school topics but they are so broad that we were able to follow what the children wanted to learn about and what their interests were even within these and to be honest if the children didn't like the topic we just went with them so it wasn't hard and fast. This year I am nor sure what we will do as I don't like the topics the school have and want to remain following the children's interests decisions day for me is tomorrow!!!!

 

Suer how do you decide what you want to cover? you mentioned seasons but is that how you decide it is that season so you cover it? or is there another way you decide what you want to cover?

[flowlow]

Hi there All,

 

I have been trying to get my head around the new EYFS and how if will affect planning etc. I have been working on some bits which I have attached and hope they might help some of you out? I have picked up some great stuff via this forum and felt it high time I returned the favour!!!!

 

If anyone has any comments or suggestions for these would be glad to hear them (as long as they are not too harsh?!!!)

 

Good luck to you all on the start of a new academic year!!!

 

I really liked you planning it was straightforward and easy to use! only one point on your small obs sheet you seem to be missing understanding the world was that intentional?

[sunnyday]

Hi sw1 and a very warm welcome! :1b

 

Thanks for sharing! :1b

[Guest]

Hi when I took over at my setting they had a very strict two year rolling programme which we got rid of. We then tried out focusing on an area each half term but found this didn't work well for us, not even following the children's interests. We would sometimes have linked activities with the school and felt that our children weren't getting the best from them as they were not following the same topics. We then had a try with school topics but they are so broad that we were able to follow what the children wanted to learn about and what their interests were even within these and to be honest if the children didn't like the topic we just went with them so it wasn't hard and fast. This year I am nor sure what we will do as I don't like the topics the school have and want to remain following the children's interests decisions day for me is tomorrow!!!!

 

Suer how do you decide what you want to cover? you mentioned seasons but is that how you decide it is that season so you cover it? or is there another way you decide what you want to cover?

 

 

 

We have ideas that we feel the children need to know about but wouldnt come and say i want to learn about spring, so we take spring and place an item on a cloth and we let the children talk about what thy see and know, so from say a photo of blossom or a baby animal an egg will come a definate idea they may want to plant, they may want to know about types of baby animals, they may want to look at trees, so instead of taking 'spring' and we dcide what aspects we ar going to do we talk to the children by use of a mind map. This fills in childrens knoweledge, . It also means we cover one area of a much larger area in depth. And we have done it around what intrests the child, otherwise our themes are based on what the children are currently doing, which can change from week to week. We always ask the children what they want to do once we have decided on a topic and this is incorporated on the weekly plan

 

feel im rambling, hope this makes sense - my daughter is cooking bacon and it is very distracting

[flowlow]

Thank you Suer makes perfect sense. Just had my bacon lol

[Guest]

Congrats on gaining EYPS

One piece of advice you can't change the world in a day......take it one step at a time, it might not feel like it sometimes but you'll arrive at your happy place eventually

Especially if you have inexperienced staff they are way behind your knowledge so it'll be a massive learning curve for them but the bonus is you can shape and mould them to the practitioners you want.......and get them thinking the way you do!

 

We're a PDN we don't follow topics but do have the usuals seasons, festivals(used in the same way as Suer) in the background as part of our long term plan along with the EYFS and continuous provison.....no medium term plan......short term plan is our enhancements to cp from individual and shared interest and learning and development needs.

 

Good Luck

[Guest]

wow, thanks everyone! im meeting with my other two team members tomorrow and lets see what happens once we have dealt with the formalities of new staff (another new thing for me!) and make the best use we can of this last week of holidays! not had a break all six weeks!

[Hoolahoney]

Hi brief breakdown of our planning, hope it helps.

• We were told the EYFS in whole, themes, principles, areas of learning etc are your long term plan so no need for a seperate written long term plan so we don't have one!
  
• We have a medium term plan that covers a very rough idea of events that may happen that half term, a starting topic that will probably evolve into something else from the childrens interests but gives us a starting focus and some activity ideas that fit to the specific areas that we will try to do this half term. These activity ideas may be craft related or include visits to places or a sound game etc.
  
• Our short term plan is done as a group each Thursday for the following week. On it we put any notes of what children have requested, enjoyed, keyworker requests, parent requests, and anything else. We provide a continuous provision anyway and try to extend activities where possible.
  
• We complete learning journeys with the children and have the statements at the back to mark when we have seen or have evidence for something
  
• We do a progress report for all the children once a term, a copy of this goes home with the parents and is their "next steps" as such. We have 65 children in total so it works out about 7 children per keyworker.
  

 

if you need more info or a copy of anything planning wise, let me know I'm happy to share but I don't want to plonk it on here if it isn't needed!

[Guest]

Thanks Hoolahoney, appreciate you sharing, always get in a muddle with long, medium and short planning - the more years I do, the more confused I get. Possibly senior moments creeping in now. Would like to see your planning as always open to see new ideas and thoughts. Thanks. Happy New Term when it starts!!!!

x

[Hoolahoney]

Weekly Planning cond.doc

Medium Term.doc

 

Here you go! We also have a room plan in addition to the weekly plan, this is pretty much it for our planning, it's been very simplified by our EYA so doesn't resemble a lot of the ones on here. I have continuous provision posters on the wall for each area which you could say is part of long term i guess.

[sunnyday]

Thanks for sharing! :1b

[Guest]

thank you everyone! i think we are sorted for the moment, going to give it a go and tweek as we go! children start back on tuesday and i am so excited!! although i am a little nervous also, but still so happy!!! thanks again!!

[Guest]

Have a fantastic day back on Tuesday, We back on Thursday.

 

This is like new year for me, I guess for most of us it feels like this as we all mostly work to an academic yr.

 

So happy new year to you all