Question...how Long Does It Take You To Plan?

[Clairelu]

Just a quick survey to find out how long it takes you to plan. I seem to spend hours and hours without making much progress and I am getting fed up. For example, I have spent over 3 hours today and barely got past Monday. I find planning by myself so frustrating.

[Susan]

Agreed!!

 

Its alot easier on the computer though than handwriting. I often work with last weeks plans and rewrite from there as I find that alot easier too. Either way it takes too long!!

[Guest]

Hi, yes far too long!!!! I do get easily distracted, can't imagine why

[Guest]

Don't spend nearly as long as I used to...... we are now following child-initiated learning and use our time more purposefully in observing and planning for individuals, rather than reams of sh/m & long termr planning which no-one ever looks at! I probably spend 3 hours on average doing 1 week's planning, evaluation of previous week, and prep for next week, including my 10 keyworker children. Must point out that we are a sessional pre-school open mornings only, registered for 20 children from 2 years to school age.

Just a question - if you spend ages planning are you actually achieving everything you put on your plan? I can plan for England but realised I was getting frustrated when we never had time to carry out a lot of the activities. Better to 'do a few things well' that's my new motto!

 

Good luck with your mini survey - hope you get lots of replies, and remember - you have a life outside Nursery - don't let planning rule your life!

[Guest]

Answer: TOO LONG!!!!

[Guest]

In my preschool every single area is self select, and resourced to provide for our continuous provision. Our plans just include specific activities derived from the continuous provision resources for individual children throughout the week which is derived from observations.

Our learning focus is from our long term plan, an area and an aspect per week, any play interests the children have shown are incorporated into this focus. So really as long as the staff know the learning focus, the individual childrens play plans then the planning is achieved.

The childrens play plans are written during the course of a session for either the childs next session or the folowing week if we feel we need additional resources that are not available.

An example this weeks planning took me a few minutes. A lot of children are interested in super heroes, particularly power rangers. Our long term plan (written in Sept 06) has the focus for this week as KUW designing and making skills, so we shall be encouraging the children to design and make a super hero base. We have noted that one cild is not too sure of her shapes so her play plan includes shape recognition games using various play contexts, her favourite play at the moment is filling up the shopping trolleys, so instead of interacting with her about the role play of shopping which she hs done for a while now we will focus her attention on the shapes of the items she is buying, then other input from painting 3D boxes to identifying shapes on our local walks.

 

Planning for me really takes the few minutes it takes to observe and note childrens developmental areas of interest / need onto the weekly planning sheets as we work throughout the week. It is not a seperate out of class task. If you know what I mean.

 

Obviously your planning is a bit different as you need to include maths / Cll focus and timetabling use of hall etc for PE.

 

Peggy

[Guest]

Not very long at all!

 

We have spent time drawing up our long term plan - ensuring the ELGs were covered and repeated through topics and then considering what ELGs were covered through our routines and environment (which we have laminated and displayed.)

 

I also used those wonderful continuous provision sheets from this site explaining the learning in lots of different areas in the Foundation Stage world which, again, are laminated and displayed.

 

 

About a year ago I stopped doing a weekly plan and haven't looked back since - it has been great. We increasinlgy respond to the children's needs and interests as the days pass or sometimes adapt things for the afternoon because of how the morning went.

 

We do meet up as a team on Fridays and 'plan' an overview for the next week but it really isn't very detailed or time consuming.

 

It would be wrong for me to say I don't do any planning because I am constantly reflecting and thinking about what to do next BUT I don't produce detailed written plans on a weekly/daily basis at all. In the past, when I have, I never looked at them anyway - they were just a paper and pen exercise for a Sunday night.

 

The six areas of our curriculum are meant to be 'equal' - I mention this because I think (?) many people do really detailed literacy and numeracy plans - which I guess is a hang over from the Literacy Hour etc and not appropriate for FS.

 

When I am being observed I often produce a 'plan' but not always.

 

 

Peggy - I was interested to read about your Super Heroes role play. I have recently been on a Role Play Course and got the impression there that Super Hero play was to be discouraged because many children find them intimidating. I allow my children to play 'Super Heroes' as it is a topic of high interest to them and the play is always constructive, purposeful and not, that I am aware, threatening at all. In fact, the child who is very sensitive in my class is the one most drawn to it (I have read somewhere that sometimes children are attracted to the toys/symbols they fear the most) and I wonder with him if it really helps him to role play 'super heroes' to work through his anxieties. The play has also been extremely inclusive.

 

I came away from the course thinking I had been doing the wrong thing, so I was pleased to read your post as I really think your advice and knowledge is brilliant!

[Guest]

aw, thanks bungalow, glad to hear you enjoyed your course. Not sure why anyone has the right to say a subject that interests children shouldn't be used.

One of the reasons we are doing it ( apart from the obvious interest) is because a few of the boys kept bringing in their own power rangers, some preschools discourage toys from home but we noticed there was lots of friction about 'sharing' 'own toys, so rather than saying no toys from home, thus avoiding a learning potential, we decided to ask for more super heroes from home so that the children could learn to share. We have a rule that everything that comes into preschool is for everyone to use, there is no sigle person ownership. It's taking them a while to understand, or if they understand, to accept this, but we are gradually getting there. It has prompted lots of negotiation discussions, thinking about others and even a sense of community folllowing successful negotiations. It has actually enabled the more timid children to come out their shells ( motivated by toys they love). The play is not aggressive, one boy did say, we are going to fight and kill, I said who are you going to fight and kill, he said the baddies, I said, are there baddies at preschool, do I let baddies come in here? to which he answered (after a little thought) NO. . The play has been fantastic, we have 30 hero figures bought in my the children, we designated a home for them whilst they stay at preschool ( a canvas sheet with pockets usually used for our puppets) and we have found that all the children religiously tidy away their super heros when finished with. They are caring for them more than they normally would our regular toys. They have built log enclosures / bases, a papier mache base is an ongoing project. They access all areas of the preschool with their heroes, water play, art, music, book corner, construction and of course small world role play.

 

So if you want to I'd say go for it and have fun.

 

Peggy

[Guest]

How on earth do you keep track of whose blue power ranger is whose, surely there must be duplicates?