Page 28: Becoming confident in planning continuous provision
The thought of initially planning for the continuous provision was daunting for sure, this was such new territory which was unfamiliar for me. It was so different from anything I have ever planned and taught for before. The freedom and the pupil interpretation lead element of the activities was definitely something to 'get my head around'. Continuous provision (both in and outdoors), is extremely vital in the pupils learning and development. To the uneducated eye, it may just look like playing, but through this 'play' and teacher guidance, children are focussed and working towards specific developmental targets through to them, what seems like 'play'. Examples of these could be writing the first letter of their name, focusing on their fine motor pen holding skills on the writing table, or building towers remembering more than 2 objects at once in the construction/small world zone. In today's post I thought to share how I began planning elements of continuous provision in 5 top tips, followed by sharing some follow on creative planning linking the provision and the learning over time, to direct pupil targets.
Top tips for planning for provision:
1. Be creative - this is your chance to explore and get trailing on a variety of elements. The more fun you have planning and creative you get, the more pupils will engage and enjoy.
2. Observe - observe the pupils in provision, their interests and incorporate these into your planning targeting it towards the desired objective.
3. Assessment - target your provision to meet the pupils individual targets and when appropriate insure these are covered and all needs are met.
4. The key skills - not everything can be covered in one zone, just try and ensure throughout the whole of the provision areas, all key areas are covered. For example, fine motor, numeracy and literacy.
5. Get involved - Yes lots of provision is about the child lead focus and their self development and learning of the new skill but without getting involved you are not able to plan fully and effectively as you need a clear understanding of the pupils level of need and development gaps.
Planning for the creative table:
Following on from planning alongside my mentor and lots of observations of a range of elements in provision, my first area of focus was creative. In the areas, there should be guidance and suggested activities, but children should also have the freedom to interpret and explore the resources, sensibly at their own interests'.
For the two weeks of my creative planning, the focus was on printing. The table did not change daily as not all pupils end up in every area daily, but it changed a few times throughout the week, progressing the learning and stimulating new interest. The targets that were being focused on throughout these week resulting from pupil prior assessment were differentiated and were based around: exploring different material freely to develop ideas and joining materials together to explore different textures.
Briefly:
The first week I linked the printing to the classes healthy eating scheme, and explored a variety of different vegetables, their shapes and textures and how we could use them to paint. To further make this work accessible I provided guided sheets as well as plain paper for individual exploration. This was progressed throughout the week by adding additional textures.
For the second week, continuing the exploration into printing, using the stimulus of pupils interest in rabbits and chicks, and the approaching Easter holidays, using the small world animals, pupils could create footprints to stimulate the animals walking/movement pupils could use the animals to create this pattern. As the activity developed throughout the week, I introduced other textures such as lolly pop sticks to make more targeted footprints like 'chicken feet'.
It was really lovely and rewarding to see how the children responded and interacted to both weeks of activities and how they responded and explored with adult guidance as well as interpreting individually.
Continuous provision is an area that really excites me, I am sure I will share more of my plans and experience of provision over the coming posts and I am looking forward to being back on placement, planning and taking control of these zones further.
Over the next few weeks sharing my EYFS experiences, I will end each post with a little advice on some of the invaluable things/tips I have learnt:
7. Be confident. Being a trainee teacher, in line with your school it is your time to explore planning freely as large as you like. Be creative, make big risky decisions - your mentors help guide and support you onto the right path so trail out your ideas. Be bold, be memorable. That is one of the most wonderful things about continuous provision, children interpret everything in their own way so anything can happen! Sadly if it does not work - just change it up for tomorrow!
- Miss Yeoman
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