Adult Focussed Planning

[Guest]

Is anyone willing to show examples of the forms they use for their adult focussed activities/lesson plans and the way in which they evaluate their activities? and are they hand written or typed onto computer?

Currently we are a small staff team and find time spent out of the room to type lesson plans and then evaluate difficult. Also, as we are trying to respond to children's interests and plan accordingly I find the time to observe, respond to, plan, type, put into action and then evaluate before starting the cycle again using our current forms/system challenging to say the least.

 

Thanks in advance for any responses.

 

Sam

[Marion]

Hope this helps

Focus_Activity.doc

[Guest]

thanks for that Marion. Can I ask more details? How many staff do you have (and children)? How many focussed adult led activities do you do per week? How often does each staff member have to prepare an activity and the accompany paperwork? Are staff given non contact time to complete the forms and then to evaluate? and how does this impact on the room? Do they write them or type them up? Do you also respond spontaneously to the unexpected and childrens interests - i.e. snow, rain, found minibeast, visit to a museum and then 'plan' retrospectively?

 

Sorry so many questions :

[Marion]

I teach in a school FSU so it's a bit different there are 2 teachers and 2 nursery nurses to 56 children aged 3-5. We plan as a team after school or at lunchtime and all paperwork is completed in this time. We plan for 5 focused activities a day other planning is often completed retrospectively in response to children's interests.

[Inge]

As a pre-school perhaps what we do could help with any decisions/changes you are planning

How many staff do you have (and children)? we work 1 adult to 5 children usually, obviously this varies and with absentees is often a higher ratio. total on staff is 6 and we have 20 children each session x 2 a day

How many focussed adult led activities do you do per week? we have 5 a week one a day, occasionally this will become 2 if we follow children's lead and find we can extend the learning or for unexpected things we will ditch the plan one and go with the flow ....we used to plan for a few weeks at a time, recently it has become only a week in advance occasionally up to 2.

How often does each staff member have to prepare an activity and the accompany paperwork? once a week, each staff memebr is allocated a day of the week to plan, prepare and complete paperwork for, however I will often complete the focus plans for the week and they will evaluate and fill in the rest,

Are staff given non contact time to complete the forms and then to evaluate? No non contact time it is either while doing the activity with children's comments etc or immediately after, usually in session time , sat with the children, and in actuality only takes a few minutes.

Do they write them or type them up? these are hand written, and we see it as a method of modelling 'mark making' to the children who will often join in , can add to the paperwork , occasionally on it! They will write their own and sometimes ask for it to be put with the 'work' the staff member was doing. (last year at Ofsted Inspection one little boy asked if he help with her paperwork and she went off with lots of drawings and writing all over her forms etc. It was a big hit with her, she loved it!)

Do you also respond spontaneously to the unexpected and children's interests? Constantly and most weeks we have additions or changes, but since we work only 1 or 2 weeks in advance we find that most of the time children's interests are covered it is just the unexpected we do which will be added. i tend to write these retrospectively. or sometimes staff just write them in note form to say what was done, more as an observation of a group activity which we add to the planning. This can then be used to help complete children's profiles or learning journey books for evidence, keyworkers look at these and extract the relevant bits for their children.

 

The form we use is very like Marions, we found that we adapted and changed it to suit out needs over time

 

I am sure others do it differently, its what works for you and your team.

 

Inge

Edited May 29, 2007 by Inge

[Guest Wolfie]

We planned one focus activity a day, linked to one major area of learning, although of course elements of all the others were always covered as well. We had five members of staff, though not all full time, and so each member of staff had one day a week when they were responsible for planning and preparing the focus activity and completing the planning paperwork. We got together as a staff team once every 4-6 weeks to plan for the coming weeks and for staff to discuss and decide which focus activities they wanted to be responsible for.

[Guest]

Thank you so much for such detailed responses - I will share the information with my staff team.

 

Thanks again

 

Sam