Opening Up Nursery/reception

[Guest]

During the afternoon we are going to open a sliding door from the nursery into my reception class, as there will only be 8 nursery children , the nursery teacher and nursery nurse will be supporting me with my class of 25 by doing this. Does anybody have any suggestions as how we can do this without too much disruption to the nursery or my reception class. Would you do it as having compulsary reception focused activities that nursery could take part in if they wished?? I would love some suggestions.

[Susan]

CIA would work well wouldnt they? Perhaps with a focus/ catch up activity and some activities that all children could participate in ie art, music etc.and an ideal time for your observations?

[Guest]

I was just wondering why are you only going to do this in the afternoon?

 

We are in the process of setting up a 0-6 foundation stage unit. When we had the reception class joining the nursery for parts of the day we actually found this quite disruptive to the nursery day as the reception children came in full of energy, like they were being 'let out'. THis made us wonder about integrating but then we visited some FS units in Tower Hamlets and realised it was the 'novelty factor' that was causing the problem - where it happens all the time it is not an issue. So why not just slide the door back all the time and have 33 children looked after by 3? 4? staff. Then you would just have to ensure you were planning adult focus activities appropriate for younger children and others for older children. Having more staff would enable time for observation and also working more closely with a focus group.

Obviously this would not work if you are doing whole class teaching with reception in the morning but then I would ask why are you opening the door at all?

Our experience would suggest a little bit of integration is worse for the nursery than full-time integration or none at all.

[Susan]

Interesting perspective, androyd but one I can relate to from trying to integrate 3 classes of reception children.

 

I have been teaching for long enough to remember when nursery and reception aged children were taught together in a nursery setting although provision was only for half days then and the numbers involved meant that the children were for the most part older rather than younger but that would seem to be the ratio here?

[Guest]

the morning nursery is full and the pm only has 8 children, there is also no classroom support in the pm for my class so thats why we thought the pm would be better. That is not to say that those ch. that need nursery will still be able to use it and the same with those that could come into me.

[mundia]

Hi Ecorri, I think the arrangement you have lends itself very well to opening up the nursery and reception. I would agree with Susan that CIA during this time would be the way to go.

 

However I think androyd has a valid point too. If you are spearate for t he morning and not for the afternoon, how do you ensure that the two sets of nusrery chidlrn are getting the same type of provisiosn? We had nightmares last year when we went part time fr teh frist time and had to change so many things because we couldnt do some things only with the morning children or only with the afternoon children. Thenak goodness we have gone back to FT this year.

 

I wonder also what will hapopen when your pm numbers go up? are you expecting them to?

[Guest]

I would imagine the numbers will go up they usually do. Things are a little up in the air at the moment we have just gone into special measures after our ofsted, and i have been moved into the foundation stage our inspector thinks we should open up pm, it is quite difficult as i understand that we all need to work together to make these improvements but the other fs teacher is not keen tricky times ahead i think