Susan

Happy Birthday!

What a success this has been. I was there almost from the start and it was a life saver.

Ive been absent from the active community for a while now due to retirement from school, but I am so pleased that everything continues to grow.

Congratulations to everyone on the hard work that has made this community and enabled it to continue to thrive.

 

Belated Birthday Greetings to one and all.

 I havent checked in for a long time now as I have been "retired" for nearly 8 years and am completely out of touch,. Early retirement I hasten to add and in the last 7 years I have been revisiting the joys of early childhood with a great nephew!
He will soon be starting yr3 and I will be completely out of my comfort zone. Its a strange time in education right now with all the schools shut in this health scare we find ourselves in and I am feeling very wobbly with needing to look after my elderly mother.
Congratulations to Steve and Helen for the vision that they had, that has made this forum not only grow and develop but also remain sustainable. 

No experience of this but do think about the weight that might be involved.

I have worked in a classroom with concertina like doors between rooms and they were a nightmare, heavy to open, difficult to keep held back and difficult to close again properly!

Thanks Looby Loo!

What are the current guidelines for this please?

Should a child be in nursery?

Its great! There are appropriate Reception resources available.

Interesting topic, Green hippo.

I have always found stickers/ reward charts very difficult to use successfully both in the classroom and at home. ( I probably never did so at home anyway). Some children are very easy to reward and I did not like feeling I was rewarding them for behaviour that came naturally to them even if it was the desired behaviour of the group. I felt it set them up as superior to the rest and I was worried that their peers might resent them with the perpetual reward and awareness. It was also difficult not to reward them when they were obviously displaying the required behaviour.

For other children, the reward of a sticker was almost impossible as try as hard as they might they could not achieve what was really required...thinking children with EBD behavioural traits here and to reward them and not others would have been difficult. The reward of a sticker did not really reinforce any behavioural expectations for these children either.

Little children focus on the moment, Im being good now so I need a sticker rather than I need to do that sooner/ quicker to get my sticker.

Stickers can have a place, I liked to give them to children who had tried hard and that was easier to maintain for me and them as I was not setting them up against their peers, nor did I need to have a race to get the stickers on. When I was following school policy and using stickers willy nilly it was obvious that the behaviours changed when I reached for the stickers rather than children wanting to behave well. Much more successful was the verbal reward " superstar" !

I tried whole class rewards, one very challenging class actually told me that as they had behaved well enough to earn their reward they didn't need to continue! (Reception!!!)

Another whole school behaviour policy to use a traffic light system with the idea that children moved from green to amber to red with sanctions on red was also difficult to maintain, some children just liked the attention of seeing their names move and really weren't bothered if they went from green to red!

I hope all that makes sense, but I suppose the real answer is you have to do what feels right for you and be consistent. I didn't like stickers and didn't feel I was consistent nor did I like whole class rewards but some people do and can make these things work. I also think the children/ cohort go a long way to making these things easy/ easier to apply and maintain.

I had one in my reception classroom some years ago and I loved it! It was much easier to work with a group a children on more formal tasks But as Catma says, it is huge and it was quite difficult to "house" in that I liked to reorganise my space at frequent intervals and found that I couldnt. It was also difficult to work at with games etc.

I feel your pain.

However, as an ex Reception teacher, we are expected t make so much progress with our cohorts that unless the children come in doing some of those things we can not meet our targets either. Teacher pay progression is now dependent on progression/ attainment of the cohort.

Dont blame the schools/ teachers, they want the best for the children too but its easy to be blinkered when the hoops you have to jump are so high.

Rather you than me, enjoy!

What a fantastic topic! Information books??? Illustrations?

Paul Johnson book making could have some ideas for different book formats which could lead to all sorts of spin offs.

Hope you had a good day, Helen.

What does your HT say?

Unless you are going to be beaten with a stick about this, then I would be inclined to let it go.Did the Inspector want to see something more formal? Make sure you have opportunities for teaching letter formation etc and signage to illustrate what the children are doing. Did the Inspector actually appreciate the writing opportunities as you do?

Oh Rea!

What a tricky situation. You do need to support the staff but try to make sure you are not seen to be taking sides.

Parent is upset and everyone being confrontational is not going to help child who I guess is central to this.

I do think that if everyone else got a reward then perhaps Manager could/ should have qualified something that the child had done well and have given a reward to child too. I would be pretty upset, as a parent, if I thought my child had been singled out in this way. Not very good for child's self esteem either.

However, this is one of those tricky situations where perhaps rewards are not the right path. Difficult situation but may give you all some thinking time. Should the child have their own behaviour plan for example that they can be rewarded against alongside the others, if the behaviour is challenging.

Good luck with the meeting.

No the 5 training days are extra.

Academic year is 39 weeks. Nominally 3 x 13 week terms although in practice Autumn term is often 14 or 15 weeks and Spring term shorter.

powder paint?

No, you have an admission policy for a reason.

I didnt spot the invitation early enough either....probably cos I was raiding the food shelves at M&S and Sainsbury's. Drove past earlier today and they were queueing for the car parks so glad I decided to venture out but it would have been nice to chat!

Thanks Rea, and the same wishes to you.

Take care everyone and have a Happy Christmas.

I think this is a conversation that is best had with the schools that you feed..they will be able to give you the best guidance as what they would find useful/ helpful.

Should we not be giving children the skills to use the real thing...the children's kindle tablet has a bumper bar but they ought to be sat down using it, thus avoiding dropping. No idea what the Apps are like but Apple seems to have a heads up although Ive not used that either. I think you need to investigate what you want the children to learn and be able to do with it and then decide on your delivery method! Maybe, its something you can do without? Toys seem to be fast disappearing from the agenda in homes if the disappearance of ELC from the highstreet is an indicative trend, toy shops had already become a dying breed.

Yes. That is the assessment tool for the Reception year.

Congratulations on the new job! Exciting but stressful understood but you wont be expected to do everything at once!

Maybe you can spend a day in your new class or maybe it is too busy at your school? Can you ask the new teacher to spend some time with you? Do you work in a team so someone else will know the ropes?

You need to leave everything up to date and ready to go, just as if you are preparing for a new term but without the safety of a holiday to tie up any loose ends. Keep things simple but fun in this busy run in school now to enable you to have the energy to get your records straight etc.

Enjoy the rest of this term, enjoy the holiday, have a rest and worry about the new job when you get there!

I think you as the qualified person will be the key worker in terms of responsibilities, as mentioned above, etc but you can delegate to your TA. I have however worked with some TAs who would not have been able to do this for me, in which case your day to day tasks are much harder. Developing a working relationship with your TA who can support you is much more satisfactory but only you will know to what degree your TA is able to do that.