Continuous Provision Planning - Help

[Guest]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me. My head teacher has informed me that my planning is not detailed enough for the continous provision. At the moment I have a grid with numeracy area literacy area malleable area etc in which i write what will be in each area. She is now saying that my planning should show what key questions I am asking for every single area. In each area I do have an A4 sheet displayed with learning objectives for the sand/water which I got from here, but she says that is not enough and I need to show every day what the LO and key question is for every single area. She also says that I dont have enough childrens work on display. She also says that my home corner should be changed more than once a half term.

Please can someone give me some help. I feel as if I want to give up teaching altogether.

[Guest]

  Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me.  My head teacher has informed me that my planning is not detailed enough for the continous provision.  At the moment I have a grid with numeracy area literacy area malleable area etc in which i write what will be in each area.  She is now saying that my planning should show what key questions I am asking for every single area.  In each area I do have an A4 sheet displayed with learning objectives for the sand/water which I got from here, but she says that is not enough and I need to show every day what the LO and key question is for every single area.  She also says that I dont have enough childrens work on display. She also says that my home corner should be changed more than once a half term. 

Please can someone give me some help.  I feel as if I want to give up teaching altogether.

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Hi,

I think your head teacher needs to get into the real world of Foundation Stage Teaching. Does she really think you have time to do all of that??? The question she needs to ask herself is who is going to read all of that information? What a waste of time!

Have you got a link inspector who you can speak to about this. If not I'm sure if you look on this site there is bound to be some sort of article about planning the Foundation Stage.

 

I'm sorry I haven't been any help. Good luck and I hope she soon sees sense.

 

Boogie

[Guest]

Ideally you should have a home corner set up permenantly and a separate role play area for transactional / fantasy type role play (eg fairy garden, jungle, post office, bus station etc) We change this role play about once a half term, we just keep adding different things to extend the play. If the children don't seem to be inspired then we change it earlier, if they love it then we leave it. We have an indoor and outdoor "Home" and then we have additonal scenarios set up - at the moment we have a baby clinic "next door" to the home corner and a fairy tale castle in another room. Outdoors we are creating a "building site" this week, linked to DT, to design and build houses from junk, and also from construction kits. Our baby clinic has now been set up for 5 weeks, and they are still using it. The fairy castle was very exciting at first when it was introduced 2 weeks ago, but they are loosing interest now so it is coming down and the building site is taking over. If the children had initiated ideas for the fairy casle then we would have developed that and perhaps left the building site. Don't we have to be flexible in Foundation Stage and let the children lead the learning for 60% of the time? We have learning intentions identified for the play in these areas, as well as teacher focus learning objectives when we have adult supported play / teaching going on in these areas. After that, we follow child initiated ideas to develop the play. Does this help at all? Do you have room for two role play areas?

As for planning, we have the same as you, key questions displayed in these areas and grids which show what children can learn in each of the areas of learning in that particular activity. The independent activities are planned for each week on a seperate sheet, with learning intentions for each of the areas, but that is it.

We had an ofsted inspection in June and everything was very good / excellent. Planning in particular was deemed to be appropriate, comprehensive and clear. This sounds about on par with what you are doing so what more does this woman want?

Good luck mate, let us know how you get on.

[Posy]

Oh Jan,

Don't give up.

What does your Head base her (obviously strongly held ) beliefs on? (and she'd obviously hate my grammar!!!) Sometimes Heads get a bee in their bonnet without really understanding the realities of the F/S classroom, could she/does she spend time with you?

Have you got 'Planning Children's Play and Learning in the F/S' by Jane Drake? There's an excellent chapter on displays, as well as planning C I provision, focus activities and responding to children's learning.

My bet is that at this stage of the year you are just beginning to get to know your children and the displays will become more a celebration of the children's work as the term progresses

Published by David Fulton ISBN 1-85346-752-9 (2001)

Keep your chin up. The forum is there for you.

Barb

[mundia]

Hi jan. First welcome to the froum, I see you have been with us a while now so thanks for making yoursefl known!

 

I dont think we have a single membere amongst us who hasnt at some point in their career not thought about giving it up, so you are certainly not alone with that. Dont give up, you know what they say about when the going gets tough...

This issue came up for us too recently so i think it could be one of those buzz issues that is around at the momenet.

It sounds to me like what you have in each area is fine, there is no need for a LO for every area as that defeats the object of CI play..children are wonderful at going off in a completeley differnt diraction from whet we think they will do. Can you go back to head for further clarification, or, as Boogie said, get in an adviser to help you.

 

hang on in there..

[Guest]

Don't know whether these will help - we seem to get loads of great examples of planning formats on here - mine sometimes look inadequate!! however as I said, everyone who has needed to look at my planning (Ofsted, link, Head, colleagues ) have all said the planning was ok.

The first four sheets we fill in weekly : an overview of the focus activities for F1 and F2, a lieracy and numeracy sheet for F2 and then a sheet where we indicate what we will put out in each of our areas eg home corner, the only thing we are changing in there this week is the addition of adverts for houses from the local paper, eastate agent house adverts etc as we are building new houses outside and we hope to inspire some role play connected with moving house etc. The rest of the learning intentions are more of a general kind and are displayed along with key questions in the home corner all of the time, or questions added to meet what is going on at that time if needed. There is no need as far as I can see for writing key questions, learning objectives each week for ongoing things in cont prov, just as the play develops.

I don't know whether this helps you at all.

The other thing we do is a daily planning sheet for the focus activity that day.

I feel I am going on a bit now, sorry!!

let me know what happens, hope this is useful to you. Don't give up and hang in there.

I can't attach the files sorry!!

if you want to email me I will let you have them that way

[Guest]

Don't know whether these will help - we seem to get loads of great examples of planning formats on here - mine sometimes look inadequate!! however as I said, everyone who has needed to look at my planning (Ofsted, link, Head, colleagues ) have all said the planning was ok.

The first four sheets we fill in weekly : an overview of the focus activities for F1 and F2, a lieracy and numeracy sheet for F2 and then a sheet where we indicate what we will put out in each of our areas eg home corner, the only thing we are changing in there this week is the addition of adverts for houses from the local paper, eastate agent house adverts etc as we are building new houses outside and we hope to inspire some role play connected with moving house etc. The rest of the learning intentions are more of a general kind and are displayed along with key questions in the home corner all of the time, or questions added to meet what is going on at that time if needed. There is no need as far as I can see for writing key questions, learning objectives each week for ongoing things in cont prov, just as the play develops.

I don't know whether this helps you at all.

The other thing we do is a daily planning sheet for the focus activity that day.

I feel I am going on a bit now, sorry!!

let me know what happens, hope this is useful to you. Don't give up and hang in there.

I can't attach the files sorry!!

if you want to email me I will let you have them that way

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[Guest]

Yes please Judith my email is greensman01@aol.com the 0 in the address is a zero.

thank you everyone for your supportive comments

Jan

[Susan]

hi Jan and welcome!

Sounds like a tall order to me too. Planning needs to simple and flexible.

 

Judith I would love to see your plans too. I wonder why you cant attach them?

[Guest]

You are not alone, my Head Teacher makes similar remarks too and Mundia's right at the end of last term I was feeling despondent too. Judith I'm another one who'd love to see a copy of your plans!

 

Angela