Job Share Help Please!

[Guest]

Discovered this website last night, already learnt a great deal! Myself and my job share partner (of 2 years) are moving into Reception in September for the first time! We are trying to get our heads around the planning (I have found some great ideas on this site). I was wondering if anyone would be happy to share their experiences or thoughts on job shares in a Reception class. At the moment it feels like we are going to have to do more planning and meet far more frequently than in KS1 which might feel like we are both back working 5 days again! Any help on splitting planning or areas would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks

Heather

[Sue R]

No real help, but welcome!

 

Sue

[Guest]

Sorry Heather can't help you with your situation as I am in Nursery, however my son has just completed his reception year he had two teachers who job shared, just wanted to tell you from a parents point of view it worked brilliantly, both teachers offering an individual aspect to their days, it was worrying to start with but the communication was always maintained and to us parents they both appeared to know what each other was doing, so however you do it you need to convince the parents as well. Good luck and welcome to the forum.

[mundia]

Hi Heather and welcome to the forum.

I have worked many job shares in reception and nursery, my latest just finsihedin July when my partner left. We alwasya planned together but this meant either a lunch time on changeover day or one of us coming in especially. This was usually my partner as she lives nearer to school and I dont drive. We found that it was easier to just split things so that we did different things, and changed these over every half term to preevnt us both doing the same things all the time. (eg I would do PE and she would do cookery for example). We alternated PPA time so whoever was doing that would write the planning up. It can be hard doing job share as I think you both give mroe than your share (well I certainly did) but it can work well fr the schol/setting as you have different skills. My biggest gtripe about job ahring was that I worked at the end of the week when the chidlren were at their most tired (and so were the staff) and I dont think I ever saw them at their best.

 

I'm not sure that helps? I think if you have worked woth this partner before you will get your head around the plannning, its probabaly more to do with the refepion planning being different than it is that you share?

[Susan]

Hi and welcome! You have come to right place.

 

I have not done a job share in Reception recently but as you no doubt realise communication is the key.

Your own particular time share circumstances will dictate to how large extent if you can divide the planning and how but do remember that after KS1, the children will need longer to complete directed tasks so you may actually find that your planning is less onerous. Will you be the only teachers in reception or do you have a parallel class teacher or coordinator. My last head favoured us working very closely together as a team of teachers which meant the class differentiation and delivery was individual but the planning of content was done together.

 

Good luck.

[Guest]

Thanks for all of the replies. We both live away from school (30 min drive) and both have young children so meeting up is not always easy (but we do talk alot on the phone!). We know we work well together and have made sure that we have been seen to work as 'one' during parent and child visits etc. We have had many comments from parents in our Y1/2 class about how much their children have enjoyed having two teachers as we have both different strengths and interests. Everything just seems quite overwhelming at the moment, once we've got our heads round a completley different approach to teaching and learning I am sure we will be fine! I also work Thursdays and Fridays, I have enjoyed this as I always covered the Art, Dt, Games aspects as the children were too tired for much else!

We are meeting tomorrow to start planning ( I am armed with lots of sample plans and examples from this website). I like the suggestion to take on different areas and swop every half term. I guess we could plan Literacy and Numeracy on the phone. We work in a small school (100 children) so only 1 Foundation class and split year classes throughout school. The more I read the more it has highlighted how poorly the Foundation stage has been delivered in our school for the past 4 years! Maybe that is why it has been such a mountain to climb as we have pretty much started from scratch.

Thanks again for all of your advice.

[hali]

hello and welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy it.

[Guest]

A warm welcome from me too

[catma]

HI and welcome!! I job shared my nursery class as I was DHT also so had 2 days out for that - one thing to remember in FS is that any other adults in the setting will also need to be involved in the observation/assessment, planning and delivery of the curriculum - they too will be regarded as practitioners and this may impact on how you meet to discuss the upcoming input. I managed this by having a half termly planning session with the whole team (me/job share/2 x NNEBs) and then a weekly quick update to update the week in closer detail from observations etc which I then drafted out, in more detail for my days and my job share did her days in more detail but we had agreed the overall "feel" of the week together On a monday this was then shared with the rest of the team again by me so they had a working document to guide their focus work. When I was in F2 I also had a similar aproach to this, but had TAs so it was harder to get to meet. This did cause problems because they didn't always"get" the underlying learning of the activity because of the lack of involvement in the planning stage (For various reasons, usually pay and conditions) and just "did" the activity - not always how I would have wanted (i.e. too directed etc) so it could be quite frustrating from my pov.

 

HAve fun!

Cx

[Guest]

A warm Welcome to the forum from me too.

 

Peggy

[Guest]

Not really sure that I can add much to the sound advice already given. I did a job-share in Reception for 7 years, but before the FS Curriculum Guidance was around. We split our week 2days one week and 3 days the next so that we did't have to do half days which tend to be bitty and unsatisfactory. We tended to meet up for a day each holiday and plan in detail, so each of us knew what the other was doing in principle, but how it was done was up to us. That way we could cover for each other if one of us was sick and we knew what should have been done. That said we were very flexible and were still able to 'go with the flow' and the children's interests as long as we covered certain things as planned. Don't forget this was several years ago now! We also had 2x weekly phone calls to report messages to each other (less time consuming than a liaison book and nicer to chat anyway). Our TAs were there every day and kept the continuity going, but we also divided curriculum areas up and took more responsibility for certain things. The children and parents loved it and we worked well together. I hope you have as much fun as I did. Just a word of warning though, make sure you take time off on your non-working days: in FS you can spend forever preparing activities or thinking of things with that 'wow' factor and before you know it you are working full-time; I know!! Have fun!

[Marion]

Hi and welcome from me too. Not much to add as Ive had no experience of job share but would like to stress Catma's point of involving all adults in the planning process is really important (not sure if you have a TA)

[Guest]

Thanks again for advice. We have a TA (mornings only), all of the TAs at our school arrive about 5 mins before school starts and leave as the children leave. so we try hard to inform them during breaks (although they are not always willing to talk school stuff!). This makes it quite hard, we make sure they have copies of all the plans and we use their areas of expertise as much as we can. We have also got a new BTEC student in the afternoons and a final placement student starting in October so it is going to be an interesting year! We managed to construct a long term plan and started a medium term over view this afternoon. I think we are going to have to 'go with it' for a couple of weeks until we find our feet!

[catma]

Call it a pilot with a review at half term - noone can argue with that!! Lets you do all sorts of things but also keeps sceptical others "in" because the time to discuss and refine is a definite point. FOund this a good tactic often when dealing with changes to the accepted norm!!

[Guest]

Hi Heather. I have taught as a job-share for the past 10 years or so. Some with Y1, some with R and now a mixed R/Y1 class. We plan an overview topic together, and tend to highlight the literacy we will be covering (much easier with PPA time now). (The maths we take from the NNS mixed age planning, and plan relevant activities from that). We have split various areas in past, especially P.E., music, 'science' activities, ICT suite times, depending on our interestes/abilities.

 

We each plan our own days work and follow a roughly similar routine, with lit/maths focus in the morning and more topic based stuff in the afternoon. When we just had reception, the planning was much more fluid and we would tend to use stories and current issues form children/topic and 'go with the flow' much more- tyring to follow the plans to a cetain extent on maths/lit- but usually we strayed off what was planned! We always speak on a Weds lunchtime when we swop over, and we usually have a conversation on a Sunday evening. Generally the discussions roughly discuss what work has been done, but mostly we talk about the children and observations/ events that have happened during the half of the week.

 

My job-share colleague is more formal than me, and does less observations of child initiaited play than me. However, the children cope very well and do get 2 fresh teachers and different ways of teaching do suit different children.

 

Sorry to be so vague!