Mini-mes
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We loved the idea of creating mini-mes, which we got from a post on www.abcdoes.com. They are great for involving the children in their own small world play, as writing prompts and for practical maths! Even the adults have them! You will notice them popping up throughout our site! Here's one half of Ace Early Years leading some pirates!
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If you do it all for me...
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We firmly believe that one of the most powerful things we can teach the children is to become independent learners. That doesn't mean that they won't need an adult at all but that they will be able to explore, question, investigate and try things for themselves. The learning that comes from 'themselves' will be the most powerful! We created this poster to remind adults working in the class, and parents, that we should be careful not to do too much for the children! Why not make your own version? Or download this one below!
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Pencil grip (Funky Fingers and Dough Gym) display
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Before the children can write they need to be ready! And to get them ready they need to have the physical capabilities needed to write. Some children come into their Reception year with the necessary physical skills but many don't and we were inspired by abcdoes.com to support this development using Dough Gym and Funky Fingers. These are daily groups that support the children in developing gross and fine motor skills, with activities created to work on specific body pivots and joints. We like to create a display to help us track their progress and support adults with targetting activities and this year we have done this by taking photos of the various pencil grips we have seen.
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Feelings Mirrors!
Our children are still (Early September) fascinated by the cloakrooms and so we decided to take our objective into an area that the children seem to spend so much time in! We used chalk pens to write and draw prompts, for the children and the adults, to generate talk about feelings. The children were so excited when we surprised them with the mirrors!
Child-centred classroom
Something we really believe in is making the classroom personalised and focussed around the children. We believe they should have ownership of their learning environment as this helps to engage and involve them in their learning. Sometimes this is easy - for example on his second day in school one of the children arrived with a list of names that he had dictated to his mum. He had gone home the day before concerned because we had told him that the class fish had no names! We wrote his names directly onto the fish tank and he was so pleased!
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These are our 'Wonder Walls' (name to be finalised!). We aim to continuously evolve the highlights and achievements of our cohort in a personalised, child centred way. Each child has a section of the grid which will be used to stick work, photos, sticky notes, observations etc. We also want to involve the parents by adding WOW moments and other observations that they write at home.
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After just 2 days the children have noticed that we have added their photos and 'All about me' sheets (completed over the summer at home) and are asking for their work to be stuck up!
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Here's a copy of our 'All About Me' questionnaire. We send it home to be completed over the summer and add it to our Wonder Walls when they are returned. The questionnaires give us a little snapshot of the children and make a great start to their Learning Journeys!
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To help make sure that any visitors into our environment understand the changes and developments that we have made to our settings, we have used blackboard tags and bunting. We can show how our environment has changed in response to our observations and assessments.
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We have also made small learning stories to explain the different threads that our learning is taking. We use photos, sticky notes and annotations to show where a particular interest has started and what activities and learning has taken place along the way! These are really great to give a snapshot of the learning that is taking place in our provision.
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Exploration station
Writing garden
We weren't really sure what to title this space but it became a 'garden' as we developed it! The wall space next to the carpet area was always underused because it was underneath the window. We found some chalkboard roll and decided to use it to give a purpose to the space. We hope the children will be inspired to mark make to begin with and then practise their letters.
DIY role play
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Inspired by the deconstructed roleplay we read about on www.abcdoes.com we decided to create our own version, called 'DIY roleplay'. The idea is to give the children a space where they are in charge of their roleplay. How often have we created wonderful spaces that the children don't have any experiences of? How many children have been to a travel agent to book a holiday or ordered a Chinese dinner in a takeaway? Instead the children have lots of boxes, blankets and 'blank' resources that can be anything they would like. We've also given them easy access to all of the dressing up clothes and will be adding pens and paper, including huge sheets on the wall. This way children can draw their own backgrounds and design their play to be whatever they want.
Also we realised that the children don't really need anything labelled for them. How many children stop their play to refer to the labels of 'fridge', 'iron' or 'television' when they're playing in the home corner? They're much too busy hiding all of the crockery in the washing machine! We will still provide children with 'theme boxes' that offer them specific materials to support different roleplay - for example if we're learning about Chinese New Year we might provide objects to reflect this. We won't storm in and tell them they should be using the resources in a specific way. Instead we're much more interested in observing their naturally developing roleplay. |
Our behaviour display
Our behaviour display hasn't been used for over a year now. We did some reading around the subject and during a conversation decided it wasn't what we wanted to do to support behaviour any more. We'll try to blog on the subject in more detail soon.
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Here is our monkey 'behaviour' display. Each child has a monkey with their face on it. The children learn about the 5 school values and their monkey is used to show if they are displaying these values or not. We send a letter home to parents explaining about how our system works. The letter is below.
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Dear
Parents,
You might have seen our monkey display that is in between the two classrooms. This is ‘Our Values and Behaviour’ display! We have talked a lot recently about the 5 school values – respect, integrity, determination, pride and creativity. Your children should be able to remember some of them and what they mean! If we see your child displaying any of these values we might reward them with verbal praise, team points or a sticker.
If your child’s behaviour is poor there is a clear and consistent process that we use the monkey display to help them change what they are doing:
· Firstly they will receive a verbal warning about their behaviour, how they can change it and that if not their monkey will move.
· If this continues their monkey is moved off the vine and onto the trunk of the tree.
· If their behaviour does not improve they will receive another warning.
· If they are still not managing to control their behaviour they will be asked to sit outside the classroom for a few minutes to think about what they should be doing.
If your child’s monkey is moved to the trunk they will be asked to miss a couple of minutes of their playtime or our next activity.
If your child’s monkey is moved to the trunk they will be encouraged to display improved behaviour so that they can move back to the vine as soon as possible.
Please talk to your child about their monkey and what the school values are – we would appreciate your help in reinforcing them at home.
Many thanks for your continued support.
You might have seen our monkey display that is in between the two classrooms. This is ‘Our Values and Behaviour’ display! We have talked a lot recently about the 5 school values – respect, integrity, determination, pride and creativity. Your children should be able to remember some of them and what they mean! If we see your child displaying any of these values we might reward them with verbal praise, team points or a sticker.
If your child’s behaviour is poor there is a clear and consistent process that we use the monkey display to help them change what they are doing:
· Firstly they will receive a verbal warning about their behaviour, how they can change it and that if not their monkey will move.
· If this continues their monkey is moved off the vine and onto the trunk of the tree.
· If their behaviour does not improve they will receive another warning.
· If they are still not managing to control their behaviour they will be asked to sit outside the classroom for a few minutes to think about what they should be doing.
If your child’s monkey is moved to the trunk they will be asked to miss a couple of minutes of their playtime or our next activity.
If your child’s monkey is moved to the trunk they will be encouraged to display improved behaviour so that they can move back to the vine as soon as possible.
Please talk to your child about their monkey and what the school values are – we would appreciate your help in reinforcing them at home.
Many thanks for your continued support.
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The school has a focus value of the month, so we add this to the spotlight and then stick photos of children showing that value or write sticky notes to add to the display.
Our next steps
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Here is the beginning of our next-steps/challenge display. We've created posters for number and phonics using targets from the EYFS profile, ELGs and the Year 1 curriculum. The children will each have a photo of their face that indicates where they are at the moment. This gives all adults a really easy indication of their next steps that they can support with and gives the children a challenge!
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Technology
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Before the half term we sent home this letter to encourage the children, and parents, to show us the technology skills at home. This led us to develop a display about how we have used technology in during the year. Feel free to download and adapt the letter to use with your families - let us know how it goes!
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We had already received a few photos from home, so we added a '...downloading from home' section to celebrate the childrens homework!
3D shapes
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We made 'fish 3D shapes' using nets printed from twinkl. The children wanted to give them an underwater environment to swim around in so we taught them about wax resist and washes!
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Dot Day
We read the story 'The Dot' by Peter H. Reynolds. It's a very inspiring story about finding your inner artist! We had great fun during 'International Dot Day' doing all sorts of dotty art! We then made a display to show what we had got up to!
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