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Planning......please help


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Reading with interest. I have been struggling with planning for some time. Trying to implement objective led planning but finding it tricky to put into action effectively. I encourage team to annotate plans but somehow never happens. Interested in your spontaneous planning sheet Green Hippo. Can you tell me more about it please?

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Should have said above current planning has columns for inputs, CP, two group objectives, interests and PLOD. Green Hippo just read your post in another thread about planning! Might give something like this a try.

Edited by MarshaD
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tinkerbell1403, could you adopt a more 'planning in the moment' style. I used to work more like you are describing, so look at next steps/interests and then try to plan for the next week while also trying to match with other children's next steps. It was probably easier for me as I do all the planning so I wasn't having to consider what other people had planned but that meant I was also planning for 30 children. It always felt awkward and a number of planned ideas just didn't inspire/motivate the children as the moment had passed. So, now we have moved much more towards responding to children as thing happen. So for the child who likes filling and emptying containers, I would introduce different containers then and there in the sand/water and/or the next session they were in if that wasn't possible. I would record it on my spontaneous planning sheet so that everyone knows what is intended for the following session. Some things do feed over the the next week, from the end of the previous week or if we need to source different resources. I do not miss sitting here on a Thursday night trying to concoct different activities/enhancements that may or may not work. Any children that need targeting would be done so during their CI play - sometimes we might introduce a new resource but no full 'focused activities'.

Green Hippo x

Green Hippo, I really love your ideas and very keen to move towards planning in the moment. I can totally identify the pain of "planning night" and for now I have completed binned off planning. Instead I'm getting the girls together each morning and asking them what they would like to see setup for their key children. It seems to be working well but I can't help but feel we need to "capture" this somehow. It makes me nervous not being able to prove to OFSTED that we are truly being responsive to our children!

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Could you create a very simple format which could include responsive or anything 'pre-planned' even if it's on the day.

My spontaneous planning sheet has a box for observation/assessment, a box for adult response (any interaction, Change in resources etc), a box for area(s) of learning and a final box for completed/further action. At the bottom is 5 boxes 1 for each day of the week to write in anything different we're providing which can be seen in the above 'further action' box. Whatever you use does not have to be complicated as long as you show the reason, what you did or intend to do and whether anything else is needed.

Green Hippo xxc

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Could you create a very simple format which could include responsive or anything 'pre-planned' even if it's on the day.

My spontaneous planning sheet has a box for observation/assessment, a box for adult response (any interaction, Change in resources etc), a box for area(s) of learning and a final box for completed/further action. At the bottom is 5 boxes 1 for each day of the week to write in anything different we're providing which can be seen in the above 'further action' box. Whatever you use does not have to be complicated as long as you show the reason, what you did or intend to do and whether anything else is needed.

Green Hippo xxc

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What about an "enabling the environment with children's interest list" ie you could write down what it is the child has expressed an interest in and if it isn't already available then list it and add a day and time it needs to be in the setting for. Or maybe add this to an Environmental Chart on the wall. Once you have the item of interest, place it in the area the child expressed the interest so maybe the list could also include a box for "area" upon the chart.

 

So next time this child attends and naturally want's to once again play in the water for example, they would see this item of interest ie a particular doll and play with it and start to wash it usually without any support or with support if required by staff modelling how to wash a doll nicely and talking about why we wash and keep clean.

 

This way no actual focus activity is needed and it is a natural process. If you find too many children are playing with the dolls, then get more! Also if this is the case put more dolls in other areas to encourage children to naturally play in those areas.

 

Planning can be tricky but having children expressing interests and seeing children enjoying a certain area or toy can really help to naturally plan for them and to help enhance their learning through unfocused natural play just by enabling the environment.

 

Yes i feel we always need some kind of plan in place and it will be slightly different for every setting. Some settings will plan a lot on paper and other settings will use paperless planning but it all works out.

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