Settling In Curriculum

[Jo jo]

Hi everyone,

 

I am an NQT and looking forward to starting my first year of teaching in a nursery class. I will be working with an teacher already established in the nursery there will be two of us teaching together. In the past this teacher has launched straight into topics and activities with the children at the begining of the term with lots of adult led activites taking place. I have found this to be ineffective for children who are settling in to the setting for the first time and even those settling back in after a long break for many reasons.

 

I would like to do things differently this year as I feel it is important to have a settling in curriculum, where adults can support the children and families with the transistion from home to school and children have the support, guidance and care they need to feel secure and happy.

 

I am concerned that the teacher I will be working with will need some persuading to follow this approach and I have done lots of reseacrh over the summer so I am well prepared with reasomns and evidence of why we need a settling in curriculum. I need help with one last thing how do you document a settling in curriculum on your planning? I was hoping for some advice with this and if possible are any of you willing to share your settling in planning that you use in the first weeks of term. I would really appreciate some guidance on this.

Thank you in advance for any help

[Emaloo]

Hi

 

You are right to have a settling in period. We always do this and do not start topic based work for at least a few weeks if not more.

For our settling in planning we choose one or two of the early learning goals for each area of learning and plan some activities to help with settling in. It is all very loose and free in the first couple of weeks whilst we get to know the children and introduce them to the routines of the day and they get to know us and the classroom. We also use this time for observations and writing notes about the children for a very informal baseline assessment/observation.

[catma]

Have you met with your parallel teacher and talked with her to plan this as it sounds as if you want to just present her with a fait accompli. I may have read it the wrong way.

Yes, settling is important but there are ways and ways and she may be very good at settling children, whilst also doing themed activities with them. It's always easier to suggest radical changes once a relationship is built up and there is professional trust so that you can change practice from an evidenced perspective of what actually happens together...you may find waiting and seeing how things are before diving in may reap better rewards. Do you have separate classes or are you team teaching?

 

Cx

[Jo jo]

We will have seperate classes but we will also be team teaching, I have worked with this teacher before as a nursery nurse and feel the settling in period could be improved. I have approached this with the teacher in question. I intend to discuss this with her further when we return to work. I will not be presenting her with a completed plan as we will plan together and feel this is important for both if us. I was just looking for some ideas from the lovely people on here as to how to set out the plans as it will be new to both of us and she may like some suggestions as well. Thank you for your responses

[catma]

Thanks for clarifying, I don't have a specific format but I would be focused on the continuous provision and supporting children through sustained shared thinking approaches - you could then use your existing planningformats but instead of focus activities have focus adults in areas, so e.g.instead of planning a specific creative activity, plan for adult time to model and talk with children. That way you are both showing children how to use the resources they have free access to and getting all the observations whilst chatting about what they are doing.

 

Hope that helps,

Cx

[Jo jo]

Great advise and I can visualise now how we can set out the plans, my thinking is much clearer now thank you