Organisation Of The Day

[Guest]

We are still quite formal in our school, and as a reception teacher I am very keen to change that. How does everyone else organise their day? We have got to get outside too of course, but we are quite a small unit and lack the 'manpower' to be outside everyday.

[Guest]

We have just started to be a little more formal now its the summer term. We have a short literacy/numeracy shared input then have 2 guided groups, 1 with me and 1 with nursery nurse. The other groups get to choose from other areas in class...we are in a FSU so we have a creative area, a K+U of W area, sand/water area and 2 role play areas. WE are just starting to implement guided reading next week to help build up to Literacy hour in Summer 2 term. We alternate the groups so that all the children get to do activities with an adult at some point , we currently plan literacy/numeracy activities over 2 days and have Fridays usually to consolidate skills and revise objectives and to complete observations of children

[Guest]

Hello,

I plan my day in the FSU exactly the same as Kermit21. It's works brilliantly and all of the children are very focused and happy.

 

Boogie x

[Guest]

Do you also fit in whole class PE sessions or is this covered in outside play?

Also when you say you have whole class literacy/numeracy input what do you cover in these sessions?

[Guest]

Thanks so far your replies. We are working like that now in the Summer term too. Hope you don't mind but how do you organise the day the rest of the year?

[Guest]

kermit, when you do focussed time with the children, and the others go to other areas around the room do these areas have a focus or do the children initiate their own focus?

[Guest]

Glad you asked that. That was going to be my next question. Sometimes feel like I'm going around in cricles with this - does anyone else feel the same? Has anyone got a weekly plan proforma I could take a look at.

I have one whole class session of PE and other one outdoors. The children look forward to the whole class session. We also have Phys Dev activities going on in class.

[Guest]

Kermit

I read your post with interest as we are a Foundation stage unit. However if I try to be more formal it means my T.a cannot do focused activities with the rest of the children as 1 of us floats to support children's play and make observations- We are only 2 adults. do you have more adults? Then we have outside to contend with too. So I do small inputs-1st thing and another at snack times, and then they have focus time every day at 11.30. we are all in one room and the group I have at present are easily distracted. I am going to try to do a group time at 9.20 straight after a maths/phonic input. My Reception children go into a k.s1 class in the afternoon so their lit and numeracy are supposed to be in the morning. I always feel as if I am compromising. The unit works well in every other way.

Lynda

[Marion]

We are also a FSU. We have literacy and numeracy input at the beginning of each session seperately for nursery/reception then the children come together. We have 1 focused literacy and 1 focused numeracy per session plus 1 other focused activity. The fourth member of staff floats/observes. We have on average 27 areas some may be adult initiated depending on the help available (students/parent helpers) others will be child initiated. We also opperate free flow with further areas. We do not have whole class PE lessons choosing to work in smaller groups with SAQ/Brain Gym and Write Dance aswell as other physical activities usually outdoors.

Edited May 17, 2006 by Marion

[Guest]

Unicid, we do have 2 timetabled slots for PE in the hall each week. At the beginning of the year and also when the weather is nicer we have 'energetic play' outside which is when we use bikes, cars,etc. We sometimes separate the hall into sections using benches to help the new reception children get used to getting changed and have half the children with me and half the hall for the cars,bikes,construction etc. with the nursery nurse. I also try to keep one session for a 'proper' PE slot or dance session . In PE we follow the durham scheme at school which I dip into because its not all appropriate and we cover the areas of gymnastics, games and dance throughout the year. As the year goes on, we have all the class doing PE at once, usually after christmas.We then have 2 hall slots each week plus, because we're in a FSU, when the weather is ok, the nursery teacher and other staff take children outside so that at this time of year the NN and I can do our guided/focused activities in the 'quiet room'.When we do whole class Literacy input, we have a big book or key text which we use as shared reading( or sometimes we do a shared write session), I tend to play around with the word level /phonics bit depending on our objectives and may do the text level stuff as a separate chunk...it just depends what guided activities we are doing, e.g if we are going to sort rhyming words then I'll make this my main focus before the children do the activity, or if we are writing then I'll focus on that.I try to do all elements of the Literacy hour but not necessarily in one great chunk at once. In numeracy we tend to do a quick mental maths input where we play games like 'fast fingers', keep fit maths, number rhymes, cuddly animal number lines, counting stick etc. followed by a short whole class input based on the numeracy topic that day/week. we plan the same actvities in Num/Lit over 2 days to try and get all the children to do it in whatever way is appropriate to their group.

Christine, in the Autumn term we do a very short input at first and build up to group work gradually, allowing the children a lot of 'choice', we tend to let them choose a friend they want to play with and tell them the areas they can choose(we let them know how many children can play there). After baseline testing, we try to group the children, the best we can and have small groups of about 5 or 6 children in each group, sometimes less depending on their ability. In the spring term we start to add more elements of the Numeracy/Lit framework and build up to the more formal week in the Summer term, especially in Summer 2. I'll go into more detail of the timetable if you like in another posting. Laura, in the other areas of the room, sometimes I will tell the children what I would like them to do e.g. at the moment we are using letter sand moulds to build up CVC words and I have stuck some words around the sand tray for them to attempt...they get stickers/team points for achieving this. However, they often get carried away when playing and have their own agenda!! I just make sure that I recap the main objectives at some point when we are all together. The class I have at the moment is ready for this now but it has taken lots of time and patience! I hope I've helped a bit and sorry this posting is so long!!!(I'll gladly give more info if you want it)