Literacy And Numeracy

[redbase]

Hi all,

We have had our early years meeting today and have decided to get more formal in preparation for when the children go into year 1. This has really depressed me as we are moving away from the integrated day to doing literacy and numeracy sessions in the morning and all the rest in the afternoons. We are determined to keep the num and lit jobs short, fun and pacey but it seems such a shame to have to get more formal when lots of my children are still only 4 and should still be working very much in the foundation stage curriculum. We feel under pressure to prepare for the numeracy and literacy hour and it's hard to stand our ground when the school has targets to achieve at the end of key stage 1. It also means a whole new timetable change which of course leads to more work!

Oh well, its so great to have the forum to have a moan to and to get things off our chest!!

Trudiex

[Guest]

Hi Trudie, I also have to 'prepare my children for Year 1' by becoming more formal after easter break. It should be a 'bottom up' approach rather than 'top down' shouldn't it in an ideal world. I don't know how children will respond as they are used to not sitting for long periods of time yet(except for assemblies!!). I too would welcome ideas of how to prepare them for year 1 'properly'

[Guest]

Very sad, especially as all the current stuff from those up on high is saying Continue the Learning Journey into KS1 - adapting Y1 to be more like Reception which is much more relevant in terms of child development. The days of making YR more formal are numbered. We welcome the new era of making KS1 more child friendly. I hope you can keep fighting the system! In Essex they have taken the 6 areas of the curriculum in FS and continued it through to Level 3 on a curriculum document. It puts all the discrete subject areas of KS1 into the 6 areas of learning and we are being encouraged to let go of our tight grip of QCAs and the strategies and work more thematically (topic based) using the key objectives as the skeleton. It looks great and we are currently talking about how it can work in practice. The "Continuing the Learning Journey" training folder and DVD covers all the issues of levels and standards in Y2 - it's good.

Heyjude

[Guest]

Heyjude - is there a copy of the Essex document anywhere, it would be really helpful. Thanks!

[Susan]

That sounds wondeful, heyjude, do you have anything you can share??

 

I attended a workshop at QCA a couple of years back about mapping FS into KS1 and was very encouraged by it but the draft materials that were promised have not really materialised unless they inspired Continuing the learning Journey.

 

Trudie and Kermit, sorry to hear about your dilemmas. when I had to do this I took the message back to my head that I could only teach process in this fashion and that I felt content was more important and relevant.

Perhaps thats why I then attended the workshop? But we did alter our yr1 provision to make the jumps less.

[Guest]

We are trying to continue the learning journey but would be very interested to see the Essex document please tell me how I can access it

 

 

Les

[apple]

i thought the literacy 'hour' was to become defunked anyway?? In our setting we continue with longer mornings of CLL and MD hrough play based acitvities right up the end of summer... we used to switch to shorted mornings towerds the end of the year but now that transition has changed in the first term of Y1 we dont feel it is appropriate. Plus what the point when they have a long holiday anyway???

[Guest]

My school has adopted the 'learning journey' approach all the way up to Y6. It's been lots of work but we now have a key skills document for each of the foundation subjects, therefore ensuring that teaching and learning is skills based and progressive. However, this has freed people up to teach how and what they want as long as the key skills are delivered. For most people, this has really inspired their teaching. Many people are incorporating lots of their literacy teaching into other curriculum areas and just teaching some areas discretely if they don't fit into a particular topic.

 

I don't get my children ready for Y1 and every morning is an integrated one. My Head and I have put in a lot of time, money and effort to getting the Y1 teachers to adopt the Reception way of working up until Christmas. It hasn't been a popular decision but we really think it's right for the children, based on our gut instincts, my nagging and 'Continuing the Learning Journey'.

[Guest]

Moose

I read your post with great excitement because I work in school in the North East and our Head also wants to introduce .a creative curriculum across the school,giving teachers the chance to make everything more fun for the children and more hands on -just like Foundation stage.We are just starting to develop this but you seem to have gone a long way with this and anything you could give me to help would be relly appreciated.Some of our teachers from upper key stages are abit nervous and if I could show them examples of a school who is actually working this way I think it would really help.We talked about developing a key skills document for each subject acros each key stage ,but we are at the begining and our head wants it in place for September.

Thanks in anticipation

Crestacat x

[Guest]

Crestacat,

We have been looking into this as a small school and came across curriculum planning from Somerset - simply called 'The Somerset Curriculum' I don't know if you can buy it in or how you go about seeing it. I cannot give you more details except its worth considering as the work has already been done.

They have got progression of key skills mapped out, where Q.C.A. documents fit in if you feel they are worth using!!! They link in The Early Learning Goals. It provides a flexible framework. We are looking at going down this route as trying to use all the Q.c.A documents in a small school has proved extremely difficult to fit in.

Maybe there is someone from Somerset who could give us details of how to see it.

Lynda

[Guest]

Crestacat,

               We have been looking into this as a small school and came across curriculum planning from Somerset - simply called 'The Somerset Curriculum' I don't know if you can buy it in or how you go about seeing it. I cannot give you more details except its worth considering as the work has already been done.

They have got progression of key skills mapped out, where Q.C.A. documents fit in if you feel they are worth using!!! They link in The Early Learning Goals. It provides a flexible framework. We are looking at going down this route as trying to use all the Q.c.A documents in a small school has proved extremely difficult to fit in.

  Maybe there is someone from Somerset who could give us details of how to see it.

          Lynda

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Thanks Lynda

Ill have a look around and if I find something Ill let you know

Crestacat

Edited April 26, 2006 by Guest

[Guest]

Hi Crestacat!

 

Sorry - have only just got in from school! I saw your post earlier this morning but felt the need to check with my Head. He said I could show you a sample as he's currently busy selling them! Here's the one for art Art_coverage.doc. The things in brackets are the references to the PoS in the National Curriculum. As I said, we have key skills for all of the foundation subjects. The key skills were devised by looking at the QCA documents, trying to 'take away' the specific bits and make them broader. The resulting statements were then cross-referenced to the PoS statements.

[Guest]

Can you tell me what you mean by an integrated day and how you organise this?

Edited April 26, 2006 by Guest

[Guest]

Knowing me I've probably used the term incorrectly! I have short, whole class inputs, spread throughout the morning, for text level, numeracy and phonics. In between these times my TA and I pull out groups of children to work on guided activities. All the rest of the time the children are free to choose their activities from a range that have been planned to fit in with our mini-topic for the week/relate to things that some of them have struggled with previously. There is always at least one activity out for MD, CD, PD, CLL and KUW. I also have permanent provision e.g. role play area, materials tray, exercise box (I nicked that idea from Marion) computer, reading area etc. PSED is covered by my classroom ethos (ha!). I have a pictorial system where all of the jobs are represented by pictures and there are velcro spaces underneath to which children apply their names. They know that if there's not space for their name then that's tough (!) and they have to do something else until someone else removes their name.

[Marion]

Hi Crestacat!

 

Sorry - have only just got in from school! I saw your post earlier this morning but felt the need to check with my Head. He said I could show you a sample as he's currently busy selling them! Here's the one for art Art_coverage.doc. The things in brackets are the references to the PoS in the National Curriculum. As I said, we have key skills for all of the foundation subjects. The key skills were devised by looking at the QCA documents, trying to 'take away' the specific bits and make them broader. The resulting statements were then cross-referenced to the PoS statements.

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Thanks for that Moose......... How much?

would be really interested in seeing the essex and somerset materials too Our head is very keen to develop a bottom up approach which is not being met with much enthusiasm by KS1

[Guest]

Sit down and breathe deeply - £100 for a complete set. Funnily enough it's one of our KS1 classes that hasn't been keen!

[Marion]

Will certainly mention it tomorrow

[Guest]

Knowing me I've probably used the term incorrectly! I have short, whole class inputs, spread throughout the morning, for text level, numeracy and phonics. In between these times my TA and I pull out groups of children to work on guided activities. All the rest of the time the children are free to choose their activities from a range that have been planned to fit in with our mini-topic for the week/relate to things that some of them have struggled with previously. There is always at least one activity out for MD, CD, PD, CLL and KUW. I also have permanent provision e.g. role play area, materials tray, exercise box (I nicked that idea from Marion) computer, reading area etc. PSED is covered by my classroom ethos (ha!). I have a pictorial system where all of the jobs are represented by pictures and there are velcro spaces underneath to which children apply their names. They know that if there's not space for their name then that's tough (!) and they have to do something else until someone else removes their name.

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Thanks for that Moose - it sounds like just the approach I am looking for. Can you tell me what exercise box is please? And also do you have any examples of your planning that you would be willing to share?

[Guest]

As I said, I stole the idea from Marion! I have a big plastic box which is filled with: hoops, quoits, floaty scarves, bats, kooshes, balls (different sizes/shapes) balance boards, beanbags etc. This box is placed in my outside area and the children are then free to use this to 'exercise'. It has proved extremely popular, especially with my boys.

 

Here is my current medium term plan, plus this week's literacy, numeracy and activities plan. They're nothing special compared to some of the things you see on here which make me freak! If you want, I'm happy to post my mastercopies.

 

medium_term_plan.doc

week_2.doc (activities plan)

week_2.doc (literacy plan)

week_2.doc (numeracy plan)

Edited April 26, 2006 by Guest

[Guest]

As I said, I stole the idea from Marion! I have a big plastic box which is filled with: hoops, quoits, floaty scarves, bats, kooshes, balls (different sizes/shapes) balance boards, beanbags etc. This box is placed in my outside area and the children are then free to use this to 'exercise'. It has proved extremely popular, especially with my boys.

 

Here is my current medium term plan, plus this week's literacy, numeracy and activities plan. They're nothing special compared to some of the things you see on here which make me freak! If you want, I'm happy to post my mastercopies.

 

medium_term_plan.doc

(activities plan)

week_2.doc (literacy plan)

week_2.doc (numeracy plan)

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Edited April 26, 2006 by Guest

[Guest]

Hi Moose Thank you for your posting it will be very useful for us .I shall certainly show it to SMT tomorrow and discuss.

Crestacatx

[Guest]

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Thanks so much Moose- you're probably going to be sick of my questions but do you only plan for physical activity in your outside area and is it always supervised?

[Guest]

Um - do you mean P.E.? I have separate P.E. lessons - we have these on Tuesdays, usually in our hall, or if the weather's good then outside on the field. Now that all of my children are full time I also have a hall slot on Friday morning which I sometimes use for dance. My independent PD activities are invariably outside if they relate to gross motor and may be inside or outside for fine motor. I leave the door to outside always open so that the children can come and go as they wish (the area is fenced in). I don't post an adult outside with them though I check periodically and rely on other children telling me if something is going on that shouldn't be!

[redbase]

Integrated day means that we do a literacy and a numeracy job plus a K&U or creative or a PSE during our jobtime rather than doing all literacy activites for jobtime(Guided work and independent work) or all numeracy jobs. I love teaching the integrated approach as I feel it fits in with the topic and all the jobs are linked. It's also much more interesting, I feel to teach, as it encourages creativity, and as I've been teaching for 20 years I need some creativity to add variety to my teaching.

Thanks for all your comments, and it's really encouraging to see how some primary schools have adpoted the Continue the Learning Journey. Can you tell me more about this.

Trudiex

[Guest tinkerbell]

Yes please count me in .I am always keen to see how the curriculum is developing bottom up.

Tinkerbellx

[Guest]

I'm not sure if the last two questions were meant for me or not. I'm happy to explain more about the whole school learning journeys that our school have adopted if that's what you were after but I won't bore you now in case it wasn't!

Edited April 27, 2006 by Guest

[redbase]

Hi Moose

Was just wondering where to get the folder, 'Continue the learning journey' and the dvd and also whether you could give a brief summary of it.

Trudiex

[Marion]

Hi Moose

Was just wondering where to get the folder, 'Continue the learning journey' and the dvd and also whether you could give a brief summary of it.

Trudiex

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It is available from the QCA

http://www.qca.org.uk/15005.html

[Guest]

I think we got sent ours without ordering it. The DVD is worth watching as it shows example of good practice.