Need Advice On Child Initiated Planning Please

[Guest Sheba]

Hi there everyone. Would just like to say I was really pleased to find this site as there isn't yet enough support for Foundation Stage practitioners (that I've been able to find anyway!)

I'm an NQT trained in Early Years about to start a post in Jan. I will be working in an Early Years unit of Nursery and Reception children, I will be mainly responsible for one of the Reception classes of 28 children. However, the unit works openly except for 2 short literacy and numeracy sessions so the teachers rotate each week between 2 different inside rooms and the outside area.

HELP! - This is where I'm hoping for some advice - The Head of the unit has asked that when we start back we use the first week (which is only 3 days!) to observe the children and find out what they are interested in to inform the future planning. I think this is a great idea and really good practice but am concerned about how I will manage it. In only 3 days I'm not sure I will find the time to observe enough to REALLY find out where the children's interests are? Also, if 4 children seem interested in transport, 6 in weather, 3 in animals and 1 in spiderman then how will I be able to plan from this to encompass their interests? What if in the 3 days I observe a child interested in something and plan from it but it was only a short-term interest which they are now not interested in? ANY ADVICE PLEASE FROM ANYONE WHO HAS BASED THEIR PLANS ON OBSERVATIONS OF CHILDREN'S INTERESTS?

Also, I'm familiar with child and adult initiated planning but in this new setting they plan for adult focus activities too. I'm not sure from looking at the existing plans how they distinguish between these? If I'm doing an adult focus on number recognition for example where I'm asking children to match numeral cards to sets of objects but I set up an activity in the sand for the LSA to also work on putting objects into numbered buckets and I call it adult initiated how is it different to my adult focus group?

 

Would much appreciate any advice on my questions, Sheba.

[Guest]

Hi Sheba and welcome to the site. Thanks for your first post, which I am not going to attempt to reply to this evening as it is late. But I am sure you will start to receive lots of good advice within the next few days.

Just wanted to say hello and welcome.

Linda