For those of you who may not be aware of my situation, I work as a Senior Nursery Nurse, in a 'teacher' type role based in the Pre-school, in one of two busy Day Nurseries close to the city centre. I am based in the smaller, 52 place setting; our sister setting can take 81 children. The two nurseries work closely together with regard to planning as well as the expected areas such as policies and procedures. The two settings are also physically close - just a few streets away, literally five minutes walk. This means that the staff teams are often called upon to cover in the other setting, so there is some knowledge of the other staff team and the children we may be called upon to care for. This information may be helpful in understanding the journey our nurseries have undertaken in recent months. In the early part of this year, I was approaching the forthcoming Planning meeting between our two nurseries with a certain amount of dread. We would be planning for the two summer half terms, the topics of 'Rain Forest and Jungle', followed by 'Big and Small'. Neither of these topics is intrinsically uninteresting, but given the constraints we had enforced upon ourselves in terms of focus Stepping Stones (ss) and Early Learning Goals (elgs) in an effort to cover them all, we had a hard task ahead. To develop these topics fully, it would have been so much easier if we could just follow the obvious lines of the topics, instead of trapping ourselves within a few selected areas. I had, for a long time, also been harbouring a desire to get away from 'Topic' based planning, which sometimes seemed to have little relevance to the children's own interests. Although I had the confidence to scrap planning and follow the children, the majority of the staff is young and inexperienced and feels constrained to adhere to planning as stated. All this stands as background to a couple of training sessions I attended, run by the Nottingham City Early Years Support Team. One that is, incidentally, a helpful and supportive body that is a delight to work with. The first, in January was on Observation and Assessment, the other, in March was on Planning Focused Activities in the Foundation Stage. Both are fairly standard sounding subjects for Foundation Stage practitioners, but together, with the content offered, they proved a catalyst for my frustrations with our way of working. I was driven to spend much of my leisure time 'tweaking' materials given on the courses, juggling ideas and reviewing current Pre-school planning, from Long Term right down to Short Term. At the same time, I was considering observation styles and comparing them to those prevalent in the Toddler and Baby units, with their adherence to the Birth to Three Framework, which is so child-friendly and indeed, child-led. During this time, I decided the best basic approach for what I wanted to achieve would be to develop and increase our close observation of the children in our care, concentrating not only on their abilities but also, and more cogently, their interests in their play. Aspects of observation highlighted at the first training session seemed ideal for this. Once interests were identified, with possible common features, then we could confidently let go of Topics forming the structure for the children's learning in favour of the children's own interests. It followed, to me, that if we were picking up on common interests to inform this planning the children would respond much more positively, being more engaged, benefiting more fully and just generally enjoying their nursery experience more. Alongside this, I very much wanted to put into practice ideas shared at the second of the two training events already mentioned. We were introduced to a series of 'skills sheets', which gave guidance as to how to teach basic skills to the children. These would then equip them to be able to achieve the elgs by the end of the reception year, the target for the Foundation Stage Curriculum Guidance - more of these skills sheets later. All this observation-based planning, plus focus activities that would provide children with appropriate skills seemed to me to justify the stopping of topic based planning in favour of a much more child led approach. Eventually, of course, in order to get anywhere I had to share my jumble of ideas with my extremely supportive Manager; we have worked closely together for only 3 years, but we have an extremely good working relationship, and our strengths are complementary. When I outlined my proposal her response was very positive. In fact, it was soon apparent that this was a route we both felt valuable to at least try to follow. With this support, I completed my 'tweaking' and review of our existing practice and paperwork We shared our ideas with senior pre-school staff and the teacher from the other nursery, as was only good manners. We had apparently all had similar concerns, so this was a painless meeting, with interest and initial support easily forthcoming. Then the proposal was put to the Director specialising in curriculum who agreed to come and discuss with us, despite an initial expression of horror at the shelving of topic-based planning. With careful preparation I was able to convince her that the idea was at least worth trying over the six week holiday, initially only in our Nursery. Suffice it to say that the whole new system worked like a dream. The planning was much more manageable, the children responded well to the new format to the activities and adapted rapidly to the concept of planning much of the following weeks activities themselves. We are hoping that, as each new batch of children move up from the Toddler Room, they will learn from the pre-existing Pre-schoolers and that the system will run itself. The first real test for this will come in January, when the older children leave us for school. The children's response was so positive that it led to the taking up of this new system in our sister Nursery sooner than planned, so that now, halfway through its first term, it is proving itself on a daily basis. We have noticed an increase in confidence and concentration in the children, as well as a reduction in the number of 'squabbles' as they are now so involved in their play they don't have time! The older children have started to approach us with suggestions for play, which we discuss together at a regular 'planning' circle time towards the end of the week. We work together to create a mind map of possible activities from the original suggestions and then together complete the weekly activities sheet for display in the unit. We have recently begun to introduce an evaluation discussion of the activities, incorporating an updating of the mind map with new learning achieved. These are displayed for the parent's information, before being filed with planning as evidence for Ofsted. Of course, this approach has been shared with, and explained to the parents, who have been as supportive as always - we enjoy a good relationship with our families, with resultant benefits for the children. We have received several comments that the children are going home, full of what they have been doing in nursery, how they have been helping to plan and very excited about tomorrow and next week. These, in contrast to a previous experience of having to prise even the smallest comment from their child! I have included the text of a display entitled Motivational Planning I mounted for the parents introducing the new system, for your information. These are all included in the appendix. All this change required a complete revamping of existing paperwork. Our existing long term plan was completely inappropriate, referring as it did to our three year rolling cycle of topics. A document we had produced some time ago showing how we integrate each of the early learning goals into the daily routine and the frequency of this has replaced it (Click for New Long Term Plan). Originally intended as a monitoring document, it fills the role of a LTP quite well, at least until a new one has been written. The medium term plans are still half-termly, but now refer to the skills we intend to focus on, with suggestions for activities and resources required for the delivery. These skills relate to Aspects of areas of learning, but do not exclude the coverage of other skills as deemed appropriate for the children's needs (click for Skills document). This is augmented by a weekly sheet showing each day's focus activity, along with other resources, which have been largely decided by the children themselves (click for weekly sheet)These are fairly fluid, as items can be changed on request and most equipment is accessible for the children anyway. The short term plan (click for short term plan) consist of the daily focus activity detailing the learning objective, resources, and adult/child roles. We also use success criteria signs and symbols, similar to the widget ones. In addition, each afternoon the Keyworker groups have a short planned activity towards the same skill, to ensure it is properly tailored to each individual. The very youngest children, who are still working within the Birth to Three framework, will often be participating in a completely different activity, reflecting the differing needs of this age group. The focus activity sheets have been based on a series of sheets produced by the local Early Years Advisory Team and are extremely helpful and user friendly. The basic premise was that each early learning goal was considered and the skills necessary to achieve them were identified. Then, a planning sheet for each was developed. These were then made available to practitioners at a Training session where their use was explained. The area of Personal, Social and Emotional was not included specifically, as so much of this is covered in day-to-day routines, activities and interactions. It was envisaged that occasionally a specific activity might be planned to meet any need arising. The focus activity sheets are arranged to show the learning objective- the skill to be taught then a blank for the context within which it is to be delivered. This gives a great deal of freedom to take children's interests into account, and makes the actual writing out considerably easier, as each of the skills plans can be simply photocopied and the context added when doing the short term planning. Next, the role of the adult is outlined - introducing the learning outcome in child-friendly language, delivering key elements or techniques, appropriate vocabulary, providing opportunities to revisit. An aspect that we find particularly engages the children, is the use of signs and symbols on a 'learning objective' and 'success criteria' sheet. These sheets have been developed from a programme based loosely on Makaton, and is another brainchild of our Early Years Team. This is displayed in the area where the activity is taking place and frequently referred to, so the children remain focused on what they are learning and how they will be able to demonstrate their achievement to themselves, their family and friends. The next section details what the child will do - contribute to the introduction by discussion, talking about what they are doing during the activity, reflecting and evaluating by reference to the learning objective and success criteria and later to revisit in their own way and time. Included is a section which outlines the differentiation or extension for the particular skill, something less experienced staff have found invaluable as for some this concept has been difficult in the past. Our setting has added a link to Birth to Three Matters, as we have under-threes in our unit, with suggestions for appropriate approaches for this age group, as we do not believe in excluding any child from any of our activities. The final section is for an evaluation of the activity. Alongside this focus sheet is an assessment sheet, which contains the names of all children in the unit, with three columns for each. To complete this, the skill is added at the top, then each of the columns is dated as the skill is delivered, with a brief note of context. A note of how the child has fared is added each time, so a record of the child's development is formed over time. Assessment sheets for each skill are kept together so that it should be easy to monitor the needs of the children in any area at any time. Keyworker planning and assessment is managed by using the focus sheets with sections on the reverse for comments and observations on each child in the group. It has long been my philosophy that young children understand more than they are sometimes given credit for, so it follows that if we do not have expectations of them, they are unlikely to achieve much. Taking this belief one stage further and handing over the responsibility and ownership of their learning is, I believe one of the most empowering things we, as practitioners, can do for them. I like to think that what we as a setting have done over the last few months has done much to enrich these children's lives and I hope it will give you food for thought.
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