The Reception Day. Fao Mookie

[Guest]

Thanks for your reply Mookie, and the plans. By formal, do you mean that I have everyone working on group work at the same time? It's funny, every reception class I hear of is so different and its also funny that I have never looked at my system as formal before. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being bitchy and I don't mind it being pointed out but I suppose I've never really thought of it like that before. The nursery do their small group activities at the same time and I was just following suit really. In the afternoons, I have some children doing an activity related to my topic and other children involved in child initiated play, is this what you mean?

 

What does your day look like? Was just interested in what other people do, as I'm new to reception. I will probably start to link the group activities to the whole class sessions more now.

 

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated.

Jen xx

[Magenta]

We have all chn. working in groups at the same time too. I used to use this in Nursery too, this was from the Highscope daily routines - Small Group Time, it certainly seems to work for us and I wouldn't like to go back to withdrawing groups during CI Play. This way gives us more time to work with the children on their plans and its quieter for Small Group Time too.

[Guest]

We have all chn. working in groups at the same time too. I used to use this in Nursery too, this was from the Highscope daily routines - Small Group Time, it certainly seems to work for us and I wouldn't like to go back to withdrawing groups during CI Play. This way gives us more time to work with the children on their plans and its quieter for Small Group Time too.

 

Yes I think that is where we get the idea from. I agree it does work well. I do things differently in the afternoon, taking groups first but I only take one group a day and my TA takes a group aswell and this only lasts for 15 minutes and then they are allowed to do CI play. This then gives me time to interact with them during play in the afternoons too. Thanks for your reply, If anyone else wants to share their routines the better. I am interested to know.

[Guest]

Hi Jen. Not sure what it was that I though was formal about your day (it was 6.30 in the morn haha), I think that it sounded to me like you were doing a formalish Lit hour and num hour each day:

"My numeracy whole class and group activities link in together, eg, if I am doing one more and one less, the majority of my groups will be working on this, at their own level. The thing is, I have always worked my literacy differently so that each group is working towards objectives and outcomes that may not have been addressed in my whole class literacy input. In other words, I have often treated the whole class input and the group work as separate lessons, to a certain extent. There are some elements that are linked but on the whole, I have not always tied the two together."

 

As you rightly said, each class is different and you have to take into account the way the day in the nursery class is structured. In my nursery they do two short (10min max) carpet sessions each day and 1 adult led group activity runs all day with children choosing when (and if) to come to this. The other adult in nursery floats all day - observing and assessing and extending/facilitating children's child initiated play. Therefore my Reception class is fairly informal and although I do some whole class input this is usually fairly short (although it is becoming more this term to prepare children better for year one) and we favour lots of small group activities. They've had a real push this year in my LA to get rid of the tables and chairs in Nursery and Reception classrooms in favour of small learning bays so it would be impossible for me to have all children working at tables at the same time. I currently have 2 tables in the class which seat 8 children at a time. Therefore depending what we are working one, e.g. maths we would have a adult and a small group working in the sand tray doing a focussed maths activity. Another adult may be in the role play area doing a CLL based activity - do you see what I mean?

 

I'm not saying this the the one and only way of working in the FS - far from it but this is just the way my LA wants it and more importantly it does work for our children and parents and this has recenlty been confirmed by a 'good' ofsted inspection.

Edited April 25, 2007 by Guest

[Guest]

Thanks Mookie, I admire you for posting so early in the morning, I'm never up at this time hehe.

 

The main thing I love about reception is that you can make it work in so many different ways. I do more of a lit and num 45/35 minutes although I think I'm naturally increasing this as I go along to prepare them for year 1. Am surprised how naturally it has come actually the progression. In nursery they have a whole class input followed by CI time and then small groups, I started off with one whole class lit/num activity a day, followed straight away by small groups. Then after christmas I introduced a 40 min numeracy slot so we were doing some lit before play, followed by CI play, then assembly, then numeracy after play followed by storytime. Now, as I said, I am gradually increasing the time to prepare them for year 1. Sorry bout that just blowing my own trumpet! Your way is good too and also sounds like you've progressed them well from nursery. Like I said, I love reception and the variety of ways you can do it. It's my first year in reception this year and I'm loving my new challenge.

 

Got to get back to planning now. Soz bout the lack of punctuation in this post but I'm getting tired I guess. Thanks again for your help.

Jen xx