Planning Meetings

[Guest]

Hi

We have had our early years advisor in today.

She has gone over the pre-school, looking at all areas.

She has told me that i need to get more staff input for short term planning.

At the moment we have a meeting with all staff. They contribute ideas that we could do onto a medium term plan connected with the topic. I then take these and transfer them onto a weekly plannning sheet.

They also tell me which areas we need to work on for their keyworker children and we arrange some focus activities for these.

I just wondered how much imput all the staff have in your short term planning as i am not sure how i am going to organise it so staff have more imput.

Thanks

[Guest]

I used to have a weekly planning meeting for getting staff's evaluations of the week and planning the following week's activities. But to be honest, I didnt like them much. I found that the monthly 'themed' planning meetings of gathering ideas, and as you say, talking about what should be the focus for individual children, was very useful, and we had lots of chat, but the weekly meetings were always just a bit quiet because it was usually just a repetition of what had been said previously. I always found that if something major came up, like a child's behaviour, or if something had happened during the week where we felt that we should go off in a different tangent with regards to planning, then it was better to sit down after lunch and have a chat then because people wanted to talk, rather than wait until the following weekly meeting. Like you though, my EYA advised me to have hourly weekly meetings, so we did, and boy, where they dreary sometimes (although I would fully admit Im prob not the most inspirational leader ) Anyway, I realise this prob doesnt answer your question, but Im sure other people will have some ideas.

Good luck.

[Guest]

Don't know if this is much help but our group sounds pretty similar to yours. We have meetings approximately once a month to do our planning and occasionally top these up with an extra meeting where we need it. Having recently said bye to a much loved, very wise member of staff who left we did an exit interview together (cribbed from this fab site) and one of the the things that came out was that we could do well to include a specific slot where we discuss each child in turn, before we start the planning. We took to this idea straight away and so far its proving really valuable. We are literally starting with the child. Having just had another staff meeting this afternoon we completed our second trial of this, and although it was only 3 weeks after the first, we looked back at what we had said last time and could see real progress, where we needed to focus next, what needed more attention, who needed more careful observation (ie for SENCO purposes). Then, we started planning.... We were much more inspired in our planning, those members of staff who previously have been very quiet at staff meetings were offering lots of ideas and it was a really productive meeting. We are all feeling really excited about what's coming up and quite motivated - something we have been lacking in for some time. Yes, I will be the one pulling all together on paper but we definitely all contributed to the process. Our recording form is very basic, 2 columns, one for the child's name, one for the comments recorded at the meeting and at the bottom of the page, under all the children's entries is a box to record notes for my memory, things to bring forward, resources, points to discuss with parents etc.

Good luck, I'm sure you already do a fab job, its just the fine tuning. I can vouch for having become a bit stale and how a slight 'tweak' makes all the difference.

Hope this is helpful.

[hali]

that would take a long time if you had 58 children to talk about!!!!!

 

we all meet every two weeks and do the short term planning together then..

[Guest]

Fair comment Hali! Lucky you having 58 children!! I would think if we were in that position we would look at a specific group of children on a rotation basis, i.e. by Keyworker Group. Definitely worth the effort in my opinion but adapting to best fit your needs/setting.