Planning!
By By Dee Hayday
Dec 17, 2004, 11:22

Early Years staff seem to spend every spare minute of every day planning.

Planning is very important in an early years setting. It should inform everyone about what is to be done, what it is to be done with, how it is to be done, who is going to do it and who it is going to be done to and of course, where and why.

The 'why' section can be extremely difficult to complete. In total frustration I sometimes write: 'Why not?'. It is also important to include how it is to be assessed and how the results of those assessments are to be followed up in future planning.

There is long, medium and short term planning. There are planning meetings, planning how to plan, planning how to review plans and planning policies. It is vital to ensure planning is useful not only to your setting but to anyone else who might wish to examine your plans such as head teachers or OFSTED, who can then reject them for being too long, too short, too complex, too simple, too detailed, too brief, too neat, too untidy, too boring, too interesting, too...um, well... anything they can bring to mind when they feel they haven't yet been sufficiently critical.

Planning needs to include Early Learning Goals, Stepping Stones, planned learning outcomes, other possible outcomes, activities, resources, differentiation, assessment criteria, evaluation and extension activities as well as overviews, underviews and probably in-between-views.

Planning should reflect what is going to happen in a setting but rarely does.

An average Day:

'A' will wet herself, cry loudly, refuse to have her clothes changed and need to be comforted while her parents are phoned to find out their wishes about the situation.

'B' manages to fall headlong into the sand tray and needs to be cleaned up, de-sanded and comforted.

'C' decides to experiment with a ball of string and unwittingly ties up most of the children in the home corner.

'D', 'E' and 'F' use construction materials to make guns and shoot everyone, upsetting the younger children and enraging others - partly because they are being shot at but also because they too would like to make guns but the children shooting won't let them near the construction area. Obviously you had planned activities for the shooting group but are now tied up with other children (if you are in the home corner).

Meanwhile the children who were supposed to be exploring pattern-making with printing materials have decided they would prefer to paint up to their elbows (and possibly beyond). G joins the group and, as he has little experience of paint, does what all very young children do - paints as far up his nostrils as he can reach and then sucks off the remaining paint in his mouth. This is impossible to remove without removing most of his skin at the same time. And the planning says you should be taking a group to provide activities to encourage number recognition. Mmm...

So the planning has gone out of the window. Apart from those few children who are able to read the plans, find out what they should be doing, organise the materials and get on with it. God love 'em.

And in the real world staff plan to try to survive what another long day with young children will entail. And amazingly, despite planning, and despite what really happens, they come back the next day for more. God love them as well !

Exclusively for the Foundation Stage Forum - copyright Dee Hayday © December 2004. All rights reserved