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Hi

 

I wondered if anyone could offer me some advice. I work as an F2 teacher and next years cohort are a challenging bunch with a few children with SEN and others who are still developmentally immature. As a school we having been discussing integrating the Reception and Nursery and working as a unit with shared provision. We currently run F1 and F2 separately. We have 2 Reception classrooms, a large outdoor area and small shared creative area that come from a large open nursery area.

 

If we were to change how we run the FS unit next year what things would we need to consider? Does anyone already do this and could offer some advice? How would we plan and ensure progress for the F2 children?

 

Sorry finding it hard to imagine the logistics, hoping to visit a school running with nursery and reception together in the next few weeks. I have never worked in this way and we are due Ofsted any time so need to get our provision right.

 

Any advice or ideas would be very gratefully received!

 

Thank you Little Miss Giggles x

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if you have early starters in nursery i would not recommend it! as that would be three age groups in one unit. do you have 1 or 2 reception classes? if 2 then you could split children to make an equal number of children with additional needs in each and PSE delayed in each. they sound like my current lot in nursery!! luckily for our reception there will be 2 classes of 17 with a teacher in each, but i have 1 class of 37! and 1 teacher..... my daughter is a reception TA and they operated as a unit but have gone to separate classes as the teachers can't agree on things!! so make sure you are both 'singing from the same hymn sheet' and have a shared vision if you do go for it ....

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Interested to know if you run a FS unit how you track the children. We have two reception classes and a 45 place nursery. At present we run separately. We are considering running as a unit, however as an F2 teacher how do I know what my children have chosen and how do you comment on their COL if you haven't been the person with them all week.

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I've run a foundation unit but it was in a small school where we had a pre school of 10 and a reception cohort of 12 one year and some years more pre school than reception do had to plan accordingly.

Completely agree with sooty99 in the fact if you have early starters in nursery it's not the best idea as you could have some August borns who are just 3 with some receptions starters who has September birthdays who are 5 and that gap can be really tricky to work with if you don't have the staff, space or resources and planning can be tricky.

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Thank you for your replies!

 

Next year we will have 60 children in Reception. There are two very small reception classrooms and small shared area and an outdoor playground. The nursery have a much larger area and will only have 20 children each session. They will have early starters in January and Easter, which I agree will make it much more difficult to plan continuous provision.

 

We have never had a full 60 children before and as these are a challenging bunch I don't know how we will manage next year. There's quite a few children who would struggle to even sit for the register.

 

In the summer we will be able to make full use of our lovely outdoor area but in winter even though we go out in all weathers most children want to be inside.

 

Feel like we are going around in circle trying to think how to organise it for the best next year. We need to get it right for the children!!

 

x

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We did try a Foundation Unit a few years ago but decided to go back to separate classes with a shared outdoor area. We found that we had differing needs both in terms of providing appropriately challenging provision for all and the differing routines. We have one large room and one smaller room - the Reception class now use the larger room as there are more of them in there all day and Nursery now use the smaller room. Is the larger classroom big enough for continuous provision for the 60 children (maybe with the use off one the smaller rooms as a shared space?).

I know that some Foundation Units work very well but I much prefer having our own spaces with some ability to mix.

Green Hippo x

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