How Many Objectives Objectives Per Week?

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

 

I am trying to find out what is the most common practice in other Reception classes for Adult led work. I am working with a new job share partner and we are each doing a different Literacy objective in our half of the week (and the same for PSRN) which means we each work with four groups of children for Literacy and again for Numeracy. I am a bit worried that this is too much and think we should be doing only one Literacy objective across the whole week and the same for Numeracy, thereby freeing up more time for child initiated learning. Please could you let me know what is best practice? Also is guided reading advisable at this time of the year? I am seeing and reading different things!

[AnonyMouse_39602]

Hi although I do not work in primary I am heavily involved with the local school , guided reading is done all year throughout all of the classes as for your other dilemna i think you are right in that it is probably too much and surely would be better for you both to be reinforcing the 2 areas rather than overload

[Guest]

Hi I teach in reception and in answer to your question about objectives sometimes an objective lasts all week in CLL sometimes a couple of days, it depends on what it is and the same goes for numeracy. I do daily guided reading and have done since about 4 weeks into the year when they were all full time. I have all children doing CLL based activities (like word games, barrier games, listening centre) in a rotation so that I work with 1 group a day, my TA also does a group and works on phonics/tricky words. To begin with I was sharing wordless books with each group but all bar a couple of children are now reading phase 2 books. I have done several job shares including reception and it worked best if each teacher looked at different objectives as it meant so much less handing over to each other. In a 3day/2 day split in reception numeracy was split with one of us taking number and the other doing shape and space activities. When I did one day in a reception class, I had to do a problem solving activity for numeracy and handwriting for CLL as they were easy to do discreetly.

 

I teach full time and pretty much the whole morning is spent doing adult initiated activities like guided writing/guided reading/numeracy/PE with some groups of children who are not with me or my TA doing CI activities. Afternoons are completely freeflow all afternoon with no guided activities at all. My early years adviser said she thought I had the balance right between AI and CI (it is something I always worry about)

deb

[AnonyMouse_26037]

I have a mixed YR/Y1 so this is probably a little different. Because my reception have to join the Y1s during our lesson input (I've tried and failed at other ways) they inevitably cover more objectives than I would if I had reception on their own. When it comes to adult focused activities for the reception children I do handwriting one day a week, CLL on 2 days and PSRN on 2 days. CLL often has a 'reading' and a 'writing' objective, PSRN is a little easier to develop the objective covered earlier in the week but still have it vaguely linked to the input.

 

I also find that the objectives I'm doing with reception are often dictated by what the Y1s are covering rather than the children's need - I just aim to differentiate the actual activity according to their needs. It's not ideal, it's not how I'd like to do it but I haven't noticed them suffering or struggling hugely as a result in the last 3 years.

[AnonyMouse_3307]

Objectives are about the learning, not the activity so an objective might need several sessions to see any impact coming through - you might have very small step Learning outcomes for a particular activity but they would be part of your objectives. If you are using assessment criteria like look listen and note comments you would then be able to demonstarte objectives have been matched and that it is time for new ones!

 

I don;t think there is an answer to how many - it's about the balance of adult teaching and how this is supporting learning which creates the objectives.

 

Cx