Foundation Unit Planning

[Guest]

Hi I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I trained on the GTP last year and start my NQT year as an early years teacher in a foundation stage unit in a 'socially and economically disadvantaged area' in September.

 

The team I am working with seem lovely and I am really looking forward to it. We have sorted out the classroom already in to the areas of learning, and there are 2 outdoor areas for the children to use. We have 18 Nursery children, mornings only and 17 Reception children all day, with 2 teachers and 1 full time TA and 1 part time TA. I am just rather concerned about the planning aspect, as I did my training in a mixed year 1/2 class of quite a formal school. I have been reading through some of the related topics, but wonder if any one would share an example of their planning. We are trying to incorporate Nursery and Reception planning on to one sheet together. We are starting with a topic of shapes and colours and seeing where the children's interests take us.

 

Many thanks for your help!

[Guest]

Hi there, I am in a Partnership Foundation Stage Unit, though we currently opertate out of 2 buildings, we normally plan together. We have the same planning activities, but we differentiate accordingly and according to interests/learning styles, however I realise this is probably logistically easier as we deliver the activities seperately so it is easier to differniate when they are being provided completely apart from each other (if that makes sense?!) I think I would be inclined to have child intitiated in the morning with very open-ended adult activities that all children can access and take their learning in whichever direction they wish, and save the more 'reception' style activities that will be needed (guided reading etc) for the afternoons when there are no nursery children in.

 

Someone else may have more ideas, but that is also what we are planning when a small group of our preschool children will be in the school building part-time until they actually start full time on the schoool role in January, they are the older preschool children (if there was one in-take they would be there full-time from Sept) but only in mornings so we have planned that the reception teachers will do guided reading etc in the afternoons with the full timers.

 

HTH?!

 

Clare

[Guest]

I manage a Foundation stage unit comprising of 32 nursery children and 23 reception children. We do exactly as previous poster said, child initiated and afa in the mornings, with time planned for observations and adults playing alongside children (this also helps to gather children's interests and PLODS for our weekly planning meetings).

Nursery children go home at lunch, so this leaves us in the afternoon to do more intense CLL, PSRN and guided reading sessions with the older children.

 

We plan as a team and plan for continuous provision for our three rooms together. We put different age outcomes on our planning for this using the development matters statements. We also go into more detail on our AFA plan about how we are going to make it more of a challenge for reception children. Later in the year, we also have a 'star' activity which is a CI activity which all reception children have to access. They have to sign a register to say they've done the activity.

 

The most difficult thing is trying to ensure all of your activities are 'brains on, hands on' rather than brains off, especially in the Summer term when the Reception children need so much more of a challenge. The DfS publication 'learning playing and interacting' is really useful I found.

 

Good luck with it, I personally really enjoy working as a unit and find the children get real benefits and high quality learning from working with much older, or much younger, children.