Guest Posted April 10, 2006 Posted April 10, 2006 I was just wondering how many focused CLL and MD activities your children do per week? I have only been doing 1 writing, 1 guided reading and HFW activity; and 2 MD. Should they be doing 1 per day? I just find it so hard to get through everyone. I have 30 children and 1 TA. What does everyone else do? Cheers
Guest Posted April 10, 2006 Posted April 10, 2006 Hi ral77 I am also in Reception with 28 children after Easter and my week will look very similar to yours. There just isn't time to fit anymore in. I find that six in a group is a maximum and so I will have three groups of six and two of five. Between myself and my TA we get to everyone once for CLL and once for Maths, so each group gets two focused sessions for each area per week Debbie
Guest Posted April 11, 2006 Posted April 11, 2006 Hi reception teachers all! my week is very similar- we have one day of phonics and handwriting, one for developmental writing and 2 for mathematical development - there is no other way of getting round 28 children in a morning - afternoons they are too tired, although this is when the reading gets done! You can't have more than 6 in a group as they don't get the individual attention they need at this stage of their development. janice - reception teacher for 6 years now
Guest Posted April 11, 2006 Posted April 11, 2006 (edited) I feel a bit remiss now because I don't do that many a week. In East Sussex we have a staggered intake for Reception (I know this is not the same throughout the country) where children don't start school until the term in which their 5th birthday falls. I 'lose' one morning to P.E. and music and keep another morning free for assessment and 'just' being with the children. That leaves me with 3 other mornings. I have resisted doing CLL and MD as focused activities every morning as that would mean that my part-time children would not have focused input for the other areas of the Foundation Stage Curriculum which are all meant to be equal and inter-dependent aren't they? Instead I do a focused CLL activity one week and an MD the next. This takes a whole morning for my TA and me to cover everybody. I do, however, do a whole class input of text/sentence level work, phonics and numeracy (I follow the NNS medium term sample plans). These are all done separately and I try to keep them to less than 10 minutes and even that's pushing it sometimes for the amount that they can stand. Oh, and my TA and I each hear everyone read twice a week. In the summer term, when everybody's full time, I usually do one CLL and one MD focused activity for everyone each week. Is this bad? I'd be interested to know what anyone else does. Thank ral77 for flagging this up! Edited April 11, 2006 by Guest
Guest Posted April 11, 2006 Posted April 11, 2006 Hi Moose No I don't think you're being remiss, you have to adapt what you are doing to suit your situation. Our children have a staggered start, so I got 11 children in September, 10 more after Christmas and then 7 more after Easter. As a result I am constantly recapping to accomodate the most recent intake. I always feel like I'm trying to pack too much in and that I don't have enough time to just be with the children, so well done you for resisting the pressures Debbie
Guest Posted April 11, 2006 Posted April 11, 2006 Just thought I'd let you know that we only have four groups with 30 children. We have 2 groups of 8 and 2 of 7. Somehow we manage to get round all of them when doing our tasks but it is a bit of a strain doing writing when they are all trying to find their letters sounds on their abc charts.. Up until this term we have been working an integrated day which has meant 1 writing task, 1 reading/phonic task, 1 numeracy task and 1 other area of the curiculum lead by teacher and TA a week. Trudiex
Guest Posted April 11, 2006 Posted April 11, 2006 We work very similar to you Marion - we have 44 children and so it takes a week to get through them all so there is no way we could do more than one cll or md focus per week
Guest Posted April 12, 2006 Posted April 12, 2006 Oops - just re-read my post and it should read that children don't start FULL-TIME until the term that they're 5 i.e. they only attend in the morning until the term of their 5th birthday. Thanks for the replies so far! I've just read a link posted by Marion regarding transition which seems to suggest that it's not up to Reception teachers to 'get children ready' for Y1 but that Y1 should continue with what we do. This is something I've argued for at my school and which is slowly (and, dare I say, in some quarters, reluctantly ) being adopted. You can find the link here in Marion's post.
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