Continuous provision in year 1 ...

[Sylviesleep]

I'm interested to hear how many schools are using continuous provision in year 1. We are going to be using it this year for the first time and get the impression that we are one of the last

Euphemia, as far as I know, continuous provision means - basically - devising tasks where infant school pupils can learn through adaptations of activities they enjoyed in Early Years. For example, using sand, water or plasticine, as part of their Reception, Year 1 or Year 2 Mathematics lessons. I have a little experience of this, as I worked briefly as a Reception TA and teacher 3 years ago. I think it is a great concept, however, planning can be more time-consuming (and certainly requires more thought and creativity), and a greater number of resources are needed, as well as space for the students to use them.

To the original poster, I am afraid I do not know how popular continuous provision is. A school that I worked in here in Spain three years ago was using it and the other teachers seemed to be in favour of it. I am now a teacher in the secondary department of another school, also in Spain, and the infant department here has it too (my son is a student there).

Have you read Moving on to Key Stage 1 by Julie Fisher? It's on my to do list to re-read it this holiday as I need to work out how in going to start off with continuous provision and gradually move them across to "proper" lessons. Will be trying to meet their learning needs without going mad myself...

A couple of years ago I set up continuous provision in my yr 1 class. I started by creating areas in the classroom that the children could access independently, with a range of open ended resources that were permanently available. The children accessed these as they had done in the eyfs for the first few weeks, as well as taking part in guided activities.

Then I gradually added more challenges into the areas and also set the children some independent work that they needed to complete before accessing the continuous provision. Over the year the balance continued to shift and we limited the provision that was on offer e.g. just English, maths or topic.

I found it worked really well and ofsted loved it when they visited.

I have sand, water, role play, reading corner, computers, writing area, making area, construction, small world and listening station. We use them for accessing in the afternoons and once they've completed the focused activity in English and Maths. When they're not working with an adult/working independently they're doing 'independent learning' at areas of their choice. We don't have free flow indoors and outdoors play though.

Everyone else has explained much more clearly than I could! Thanks, and sorry for my muddled post.