Time For Child Initiated & Adult Led Activities

[AnonyMouse_40527]

Hello all, this is my first post so I hoping for some inspiration from all EYPs out there! I have just been appointed as a reception teacher in a school which maybe doesn't understand how valuable CI learning is. For that reason I hope to set very clear routines from september where ALL adults are supporting CI and adult led activities are done at a seperate time. However with a ratio of 1:15 (There are TAs for each class) I am aware that I will only be able to do some adult led activities e.g. phonics with half that number. Any suggestions from anyone of what to do with the other half and how to fit in both groups daily. My plan was originally to have fingergym, CI, phonics, lunch then maths, CI ending with key person groups. With the realisation that I won't be able to do a whole group at a time i am thinking maybe this won't work. Any thoughts or inspiration would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Guest]

Hi and welcome to the forum. I teach in reception and my year evolves hugely by this end of the year I do the following- phonics, guided reading, playtime, snacks and big news, PSRN and either PE, guided writing or P4C. I split phonics by ability and my TA and I each have half the class in separate ends of the classroom, this year I have a 3rd TA as I have a statemented child and she takes a small less able group. I tend to have all adults working on AI activities in the morning and all other children not working with us on adult directed activities. The afternoon is another story! all afternoon the whole class are involved in freeflow child initiated and all adults are involved in supporting and observing play. We plan as a class on a thursday afternoon what we will do the next week linked to our loose theme but we go with the flow with the children's ideas.

I start the year with very structured teaching about how to use each area of the classroom, how to tidy it up, what the options are in each area and only by about week 3 do I let them loose for child initiated (meanie I know but they do need that input-I have learnt from experience of a trashed classroom in my first year of teaching when the children just got everything out and hadn't a clue how to put it away again!)

I end the afternoon of CI with a whole class sitting in a circle and sharing what they have been doing-we don't allocate children to key person groups. I tried to have CI going on all day and then children withdrawn to work with adults happening throughout the day but found the children distracted and often rushing to return to CI and it also meant that some children rarely played together in CI as they were withdrawn for groups and also that there was noone to observe play. I also prefer to do CI in one long stretch so that play is not interrupted by having to tidy and move on to the next thing, you might find that your morning feels a bit like that. We don't have an afternoon playtime and so we have 2 hours for CI in the afternoon.

Hope that helps

Deb

[AnonyMouse_40527]

Hi and thank you for your response. Does this mean that you do phonics groups with up to 15 children? Whatever the routine for the day is going to be I am wanting Child Initiated to be purely that and adult led phonics/maths etc to be done at a seperate time so the children are given a consistent message as to what is expected at each interval of the day. I don't really want to do any adult led activities during child initiated as I feel it sends a message to children that their own planned play isn't as valuable when they are asked to leave it to come and do an adult led activities.

 

It's really just the size of the adult led groups I am struggling to get my head around. I had a number of 6 or 7 in my head for phonics. Maybe I'm wanting the impossible!

[AnonyMouse_4562]

Hi Katykoo,

I'm also a great believer in having separate TL and CI times for all your above reasons and do this in Nursury but have another adult so we have 10 each in our groups. However, when I did teach in Reception we split the class into 4 groups for TL time (not always same group depending on what we were doing), mostly doing a short whole-class input then we would have 2 groups doing TL activity and 2 groups doing a TI activity sometimes in an area or sometimes on a table/on the carpet etc - they would be working independently often on an open-ended task or game etc. We would then swap the groups half way through. As the year progressed and the children became ready for slightly longer TL activities, we would sometimes cover the TL groups over 2 days - so the groups would swap for the 2nd day.

Good Luck

Green Hippo x

[Guest]

Does this mean that you do phonics groups with up to 15 children?

 

i have 11 (phase 4/ 5) and my TA has 9 (phase 3) and I have 1 TA who has 3 children (lower phase 2) and we borrow a TA from elsewhere in the school who takes a group of 7 (phase 2-3) this would be different every year according to need. We assess every half term and move children on when they are ready. The whole of KS1 and reception and some Y3 do phonics at the same time first thing in the morning and all TAs and teachers take a small group to keep the groups small. We usually join in with the groups but I am lucky with staff this year as have 2 statemented children and we have kept reception children in our classroom but next year will be different. If you were doing small groups of 6 for phonics with just you and your TA you would do nothing else all day! I teach all 30 for phonics at the beginning of the year daily and we only make the groups smaller as we assess that children need more differentiation (ie some needing to move to phase 3 and others needing more phase 2 consolidation)

deb

[Guest]

Hi and welcome to the forum. I teach in reception and my year evolves hugely by this end of the year I do the following- phonics, guided reading, playtime, snacks and big news, PSRN and either PE, guided writing or P4C. I split phonics by ability and my TA and I each have half the class in separate ends of the classroom, this year I have a 3rd TA as I have a statemented child and she takes a small less able group. I tend to have all adults working on AI activities in the morning and all other children not working with us on adult directed activities. The afternoon is another story! all afternoon the whole class are involved in freeflow child initiated and all adults are involved in supporting and observing play. We plan as a class on a thursday afternoon what we will do the next week linked to our loose theme but we go with the flow with the children's ideas.

I start the year with very structured teaching about how to use each area of the classroom, how to tidy it up, what the options are in each area and only by about week 3 do I let them loose for child initiated (meanie I know but they do need that input-I have learnt from experience of a trashed classroom in my first year of teaching when the children just got everything out and hadn't a clue how to put it away again!)

I end the afternoon of CI with a whole class sitting in a circle and sharing what they have been doing-we don't allocate children to key person groups. I tried to have CI going on all day and then children withdrawn to work with adults happening throughout the day but found the children distracted and often rushing to return to CI and it also meant that some children rarely played together in CI as they were withdrawn for groups and also that there was noone to observe play. I also prefer to do CI in one long stretch so that play is not interrupted by having to tidy and move on to the next thing, you might find that your morning feels a bit like that. We don't have an afternoon playtime and so we have 2 hours for CI in the afternoon.

Hope that helps

Deb

 

HI Deb - Could you give me more detail on how you actually 'teach' or model at the beginning of the year. How do you timetable it all, group sizes etc.

I'm in my second yr teaching and haven't felt like I have nailed the beginning of year stuff - establishing rules of how to use then put away resources etc yet, and I really understand its importance.

 

Many thanks.

[Guest]

Hi in the first 2 weeks of school I only have half the class in the morning and the same in the afternoon. I planned for them to be shown one of the areas of the classroom each session. My TA and I each had half the group and talked through each area. We called it 'show me time' (couldn't come up with a more zingy name!) so we would go with our group into an area of the classroom and talk through what it was called, what they could see in it how they could find what they needed etc and model play in that area. We would then give them time to play in that area for a short time and then ring the tidying bell and each of us support the tidying up of that area and encourage them back to the carpet (lots of stickers and praise for tidying up efforts etc) we made sure that all children had had experience of all parts of the classroom. The other bonus of this way of doing things as well as the fact that children are clear of our expectations is that children are experiencing the whole classroom environment and not just the one or two areas they are initially drawn to.

Deb

[AnonyMouse_26037]

Thank you Deb,

 

Next year I have a YR only class for the first time (having had YR/1 for ages) and this is something I've been thinking about lots. While having the Y1s in with YR has caused many, many headaches for me I do also have a good strong cohort of children who know the routines/expectations and where things are so I haven't had to think much about it before!

 

I suspect I'm going to be scouring your posts for all sorts of tips for next year! Thank you for being so willing to share your experience.

[AnonyMouse_32166]

i have Ci and Adult small group at the same time but how i work it so that the children value the Ci and their play is not interrupted is that they come into Ci when arrive in the morning, once all in and sorted we come together on the carpet for a short session then one adult has a small group while the rest Ci with the other adult support. once the small group is finished (about 15 mins) they go and join in CI and both adults are observing/ supporting CI. I do not call another group away from CI. We have rolling snack and one day a week we stop for whole class snack. Then at 11:00 i take a group for Guided reading, while my TA does tidy up time inside and a little review of morning then we have phonics i have majority of class, TA takes poorer ones then its lunch. The afternoon starts the same quick imput, (beginning of year sometimes split into 2 groups) CI with one adult doing a small group then everyone CI, then tidy up time, story time, home. I also leave out the adult focus activity so children can come back to it and if it is a art type activity i leave after a while and suggest that other children show others what to do. This means that sometimes i have the same objective all week, especially if writing. I also do what was suggested above i spend the first half term having small group time in the different areas of the classroom, showing children how to use/ access the resources, what their is and how to tidy it away. It makes an amazing difference!

[Guest]

But when, oh when do you all 'do the readers'??

 

I have a relatively small Recep class each year of between 18 and 22 children always with one TA.

 

We do individual reading activities twice weekly with each child, in addition to almost daily Phonics teaching and TL/TI activities, in addition to weekly TL/TI Literacy activities (plus PSRN, R.E., ICT, Topic etc etc).

 

Realistically we can either do the reading tasks OR observe/support CI. Currently we are trying to do both and it is impossible, frustrating, and exhausting and def not good practise!!!

 

I'd love to hear how anyone else deals with this.

[Guest]

But when, oh when do you all 'do the readers'??

 

I have a relatively small Recep class each year of between 18 and 22 children always with one TA.

 

We do individual reading activities twice weekly with each child, in addition to almost daily Phonics teaching and TL/TI activities, in addition to weekly TL/TI Literacy activities (plus PSRN, R.E., ICT, Topic etc etc).

 

Realistically we can either do the reading tasks OR observe/support CI. Currently we are trying to do both and it is impossible, frustrating, and exhausting and def not good practise!!!

 

I'd love to hear how anyone else deals with this.

 

I do guided reading with groups of 5 or 6 at a time so that all children are read with by me by the end of the week, I only do individual readers once a half term where I assess their home readers and move them up a book band if necessary. At the start of the year we share books together looking at the wordless books or playing reading games and then gradually build up to reading more complex texts. I have a slot each day where we have guided reading time for 20 mins and all 30 are engaged in a range of reading activities which rotate over the week. My TA uses this time to practice and check their tricky words. In addition the children change their home readers daily (by themselves at this stage of the year) and are read to at least once more during the week by parent helpers-works for me! I do have 4 children who really don't get any support at home with reading and we do between us hear those children read every day.

Deb