Classroom Activities

[Guest]

Please, please can you share with me how you organise your day...I feel like I'm doing everything wrong and would really like to find out how other people organise their days.

 

Do you leave the children to have 'free choice' all day every day, with a few activities set out for them to go to 'if they want'?

 

Do you have the children in groups and they have to go to complete certain tasks and then rotate?

 

I have a mix of both but I feel that i am far too disorganised at the mo and am beginning to stress. What would ofstead want to see????? We have the visit looming and i am starting to panic about everything!

 

 

 

Any input/ ideas/ suggestions/ insight into how you do things would really help.

 

Thank you

[Guest]

I have times when children are doing adult led tasks, or those not with an adult are doing things I have given them to do (rather than CI). Then there are times that are completely CI. Then there are times where some are doing CI and some doing adult led - kind of depends how the day is panning out/activities are going/the children are.

 

Sorry, that's not very helpful is it?!

[Guest heleng]

We have carpet time as a whole class first thing in the morning and then the children go off to CI activities, within this time there are adult focus activities going on and there are also challenges the children can take part in if they choose to, in different areas of the continuous provision.

 

When nursery go home we tidy up with them (about 11.10am) and have every child involved in a small gp activity either phonics, show and tell, reading HFW's and getting ready for PE! Then we have another whole class carpet session, followed by CI and AF activities.

 

Again in the afternoon we have a whole class session followed by CI and AF activities.

 

We have decided on a Tuesday there will be no AF planned activites and all staff will play alongside and with the children to show them how to play with the equipment and extend their ideas. We couldn't do this everyday as we use the AF time to introduce and model new skills, as well as practice existing ones.

 

The challenges are optional although children are encouraged to have a go and we make a fuss of the ones who have had a try by themselves. Some days, tends to be between 11.30 and 12.15 after nursery have gone as it is quieter, all the Reception children are required to do some activity/ task before they can go and have their CI time. For example this week we have been measuring length and after talking about it and modelling the vocab all the children had to pick a measure (rulers, plastic hands, feet, etc) and go and find 1 item longer and 1 item shorter then their measure and they had to tell me or our student about it so we could check they were using the lang correctly before CI time.

 

It varies from week to week and may seem disorganised to other people but it works for us and our children. You know what the children need and what works for them. We could ask the Rec children to complete a task every day/ session before CI time but some whizz through and some struggle or stick at it for the whole session. I recently went through our timetable and I highlighted in different colours all the carpet adult led times, dead times (like break and assembly) and then halved all the AF/ CI times as we have 2 adults at any one time working with groups so that is roughly half the class doing CI and half doing AF or AI at any one time to see what our balance was. It actually worked out that it was roughly a third of each, so a balance!! I was impressed and it actually made me feel more secure in how we work as the children weren't having CI all the time and it means I can show it to anyone and justify what we are doing.

 

I hope this makes sense, sorry for the long post but I struggled with organisation and we have the added complication of sharing the class space with nursery who have different hours and I have different additional nursery children joining me as well as my current Rec class being in all day and I have to deliver a balance of all 6 areas of learning AM and PM without repeating everything for the full timers!! Our timetable changes roughly every half term, when we try out new things.

[Guest]

Hiya,

I had OFSTED in January and they were pleased with what I did. The children come in and self register and then start CI time. They do this for about an hour then have snack and playtime. After play we had a carpet time and small groups which are all adult led, then whole class phonics session, then lunch.

The afternoon is fairly similar but the children have carpet time after lunch, followed by a whole class adult led activity. Then rest of afternoon is CI time.

Hope this helps.

Jane

[Guest]

Hi!

 

We do self registration first thing in the morning, where we do some focus target work. We then do a whole class input after which the children go and do CI activities, we do have enhanced provision available in every area to support the children with this. At this time the adults are playing alongside the children, discussing ideas etc. We then come together and discuss what we have done in this time. For the rest of the day we put activities/resources out that we would like the children to do, of course how they use them is interpreted by the child. At this time the adults are doing adult focused activities.

 

Hope this helps! It works for us and our children!!

 

Edited February 24, 2010 by annalea

[Guest]

Thank you all for your replies. Sounds very similar to what I'm doing, just think i have too much 'with an adult' time.

Just one more question, when you have CI time, are the children choosing, anything or everything or do you direct them in any way?

 

Thanks again for all your help!

 

Susie