Guest Posted September 21, 2013 Posted September 21, 2013 Hi all, currently I am finding my Reception class's behaviour very challenging! We have a very large indoor and outdoor space- but only 2 members of staff at any one time, so free-flowing both indoor and outdoor is virtually impossible with their behaviour at the moment! I have been talking and reminding children constantly about class rules and routines e.g. for tidying up, lining up, using the toilets, playing safely, kind hands and feet etc. We have a thinking chair, a class behaviour chart where children move up or down, a class treat box for whole class rewards, and for 3 particularly challenging children they have individual sticker charts for when they achieve their targets e.g. to sit on the carpet for 5 mins. I am being pressured into getting children to sit down and do formal learning with me in small focus groups. It is supposed to work like this- I sit with a group of 5/6 children indoors doing a focus activity on maths/lit/UW/EAD etc, whilst the other member of staff is supporting play outdoors. Due to their behaviour and the large space we are finding that when a child displays unacceptable behaviour (such as kicking, scratching, biting etc) we have to remove him from the environment- meaning that 1 member of staff is left (usually me) on their own with both the indoor and outdoor environment in use! It is proving to be a complete nightmare and no work is getting done. There is no way we can have another member of staff- have been told to just get on with it and work out how get round this big problem. But finding the pressure to complete work just overwhelming, and the children's behaviour is not an acceptable reason for work not being done! (I also feel the children are not ready for formal work- but must follow what the school wants ) Any help?!! Or suggestions on how to work round this?! Getting to the point where I no longer enjoy going into school- and it's only the first half term!
Cait Posted September 21, 2013 Posted September 21, 2013 I would be tempted to ignore free flow at the moment so that both members of staff are in the same space all the time. How many children do you have? 1
Rufus Posted September 21, 2013 Posted September 21, 2013 2 years ago my class were like this, partly because it was 73% boys! We had to cancel free flow for the first half of term because we needed all staff 'on' them. When we did open up the outdoors we chose which children would be outside and inside, separating the trouble makers. Free flow is the ideal but you have to provide for the needs of your children and we had to operate like this otherwise it was chaos. 3
catma Posted September 21, 2013 Posted September 21, 2013 Yes, be pragmatic. Permanent outdoor access is not actually a requirement! But also remember targeted work does not always have to be indoors at a table and in a book...you could also have your target group outside doing an activity e.g. a maths activity like throwing bean bags at targets and tallying the totals. you could also control how many are indoors and outdoors at a time which might help. Cx 3
Guest Posted September 21, 2013 Posted September 21, 2013 i had 30 last time i had reception and a hard cohort. i split class in 2 halves and half were in, then swapped. same in afternoon. 30 was too many to be in or out all at the same time..... made sure problem children split evenly and equal numbers of both sexes and abilities. and any child causing a problem had time out by me so i could get on with group reading etc. as there were only 15 it was much easier. 6 with me and 9 free choosing, and lots of challenge in activities, as well as some they could get on with easily
Guest Posted September 22, 2013 Posted September 22, 2013 Thanks so much for the replies! I have a class of 30, majority are girls surprisingly enough although you wouldn't know it! I think we will have to ignore free flow in and out for the time being, and have both members of staff indoors for an hour, then both staff outdoors with all children. As we have 3 very challenging children in terms of physical behaviour we cannot leave each other on our own with them plus the rest of the class as if an incident happens we have to take the child to SMT meaning we end up leaving the rest of the class. Will try it for a week- suppose it is just trial and error and sometimes you can be over prepared! Many thanks
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