Guest Wolfie Posted April 24, 2007 Share Posted April 24, 2007 (edited) I KNOW this subject has been discussed countless times before but am wondering whether anyone has come up with anything new recently - does anyone have a long/medium/short term planning format for a 2-5s room, encompassing B23 and Foundation Stage guidance and enabling the staff that work in that room to plan as a team rather than splitting themselves into 2-3s and 3-5s and refusing to have anything to do with the "other" age group?! I need something that will encourage much greater teamwork and shared responsibility for planning, observations, assessments, record keeping, etc. I should add that although I fully support the settings who are making the brave switch from topic based planning to that based on children's interests, the level of confidence/knowledge/skills of the staff at the nursery where I'm hoping to introduce a new system makes me think that topic based planning is the way to go for the time being - the development of more effective teamwork is my priority at the moment and I'm hoping the rest will follow in due course! Edited April 24, 2007 by Wolfie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Running Bunny Posted April 25, 2007 Share Posted April 25, 2007 My current thinking (and remember that I'm in an LA now) is that you would look at topics that have a relevance to all the children (my home, people who help us, food etc) The focus can then be changed up or down according to the level of understanding of each child within the group. Key person responsibilities would then be to either link evaluations of children's learning to either the BTTM or FS headings. Long term - I would only do a calendar for the year of important events (festivals, celebrations, seasons) Medium term - depending on how often you change your topic, I would do a planner for the topic to be covered - snow, spring, animals etc, with perhaps some broad ideas of the things that you would like to do (songs, stories, art and craft) Short term - however long in advance you do your planning, the team would sit down and look at the topic and the broad ideas and then discuss what would be the focus each session/day for the duration of the topic. Some things will be covered more than once, some children may show a particular interest so they will need to be continued (leave space on the planning for changes to be shown) some things may go horrifically wrong and you have planned to repeat it, so the staff need to know that they don't have to persist with something that the children do not show an interest in. You could even shift the above format around and have the long term as your broad topic ideas, medium term as the more specific ideas and then short term would be weekly/daily according to the interests of the children. Weekly/daily planning would have space on it for observations so that ideas can be continued the next day or the next time a particular child is in. I've attached a weekly activity sheet for you to have a look at - the day spaces are for planned/focused ideas, spontaneous if for staff to fill in and I think the other boxes are self-explanatory?0_3_weekly_activity_sheet.doc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 25, 2007 Share Posted April 25, 2007 Hello We plan all together agree with the reply above about the topics, we do very brad topics that can be adapted to younger and older children. This term we are doing in the garden. last week we did bird printing so we had a range of sponges out that made up a bird shape I did one to show them what it looked like and directed the children as we were doing it, but everyone had a really individual bird. For some reason the web site is playing up I will try to PM them to you if that is a help Deb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lou Posted April 25, 2007 Share Posted April 25, 2007 Thanks for the form Running Bunny. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rea Posted April 25, 2007 Share Posted April 25, 2007 Wolfie, when I was at playgroup we were in one room with 2.6 yr olds to 4 yr olds The keychildren were spilt by the register not by ages, so each staff member had a mix of ages and abilities. That way there was no problem with anyone saying they werent going to look at either BTT or FS. We all planned together drawing on our obs and inputing ideas which we then wrote up as one plan with a box for differentiation. I've received my EYFS pack today and at first glance it should do away with problems like that anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Wolfie Posted April 25, 2007 Share Posted April 25, 2007 Yes, I agree that the EYFS should help in doing away with the "them and us" syndrome, and I too have decided that when I introduce the keyworker system that each child will be assigned to a keyworker that" keeps" them from when they come into the 2-5s room until they leave for school. My pack came too today but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Light bedtime reading.....? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 26, 2007 Share Posted April 26, 2007 OK let me try again - see if this is any good I don;t know if you have seen these already or not but they have been pinched from on here. When we were inspected last month, my ofsted inspector seemed quite impressed with my planning overall and particularly like this bridging the gap stuff Debs A_competent_learning_link_to_FS.doc A_Healthy_Child_Link_to_FS.doc A_skillful_communicator_link_to_FS.doc A_strong_child_link_to_FS.doc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Wolfie Posted April 26, 2007 Share Posted April 26, 2007 Thanks for those Debs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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