Can any EYFS/ Reception teachers advise please?

[OutdoorPopulation]

Do you use 'must do tasks' in your CP?

HT wants me to run a teacher table and must-do-tasks while the children access CP. I have 25 in the class and one TA, but she is really necessary as a 1-1.

What is 'CP' ?

Cp = continuous provision.
Not formally but we do make sure every child has done a focused task with an adult, some need more encouragement than others.

Tell her you’ll need more staff.

You can’t run good continuous provision if all the staff are engaged elsewhere.

What’s the HTs rationale for thinking you need one? I’d be tempted to see if there’s another way of fitting a teacher led group activity into the day if she thinks you need one.

We have each child doing a 3 x teacher led activities a week, plus 4-5 independent pieces of work within CP (we call them challenges)-these are supported/encourages by the TAs.

45 children, 2 teachers, 2 TAs and a number of separate 1-1s. I can't see how you can do CP plus adult led activities without another TA.

Thank you. I’m at my wits’ end. We used to have 1 teacher, 1 TA and the required amount of 1-1s.

We have ran this year with whole class teaching and then freeflow, but HT isn’t happy as the CP isn’t providing ‘enough challenge’. TBH, I don’t disagree with her, but she doesn’t see that 4 year olds can’t possibly be expected to choose and complete independent tasks/ challenges to the correct standard.

*take my advice with a pinch of salt, and I am a Not Quite Qualified Teacher (fingers crossed it will be this week!) and I am going into SEN teaching in September, so am already in awe of the things mainstream teachers can do with much lower ratios. But I can't see how you can do it. Could your head pop in to see how she would recommend you do it? Ours would on the whole struggle to complete their challenges without adult input, and that's at this point in the year.

I suspected that was the answer. Have a look at some of Anna Ephgrave’s work. You can increase the challenge in CP, but I don’t think this is the way to do it.

Don’t know what your timetable looks like, but you might be better off just adding an additional w/c or half class session or 2, so you have one either end of free flow.

And then look at the CP separately and see you you could increase engagement and challenge there.

We have every adult doing an adult led task and none supporting CP I campaigned to change this at the start of the year but was basically told no by the HT. I would have tried again next year using the new framework as an excuse but I'll be on maternity leave, have a look at Greg Bottrill's Can I Go and Play Now and then have a look at his work on play projects, it seems like a good way to make SLT see the purpose of play whilst it still being proper play and would have been my way of approaching things if there was still resistance to full ITMP a la Anna Ephgrave

This is the problem with SLT rarely having early years experience.

I have a question about CP as a parent.

If you have kids who start reception socially mature, who can already read, are beginning to write and are very competent in maths, how do you ensure CP is stretching them/providing enough challenge?

Don't lots of children just choose easy options along side their peers and not challenge themselves enough?

That's why it's only really high quality if you have adults supporting it, asking open ended questions and challenging the children's thinking based on staff knowledge of their individual next steps.

Ok that's helpful to understand - so there's a key element there of an adult on hand to challenge etc. That makes more sense.

It does make me wonder how it can be really successful if you only have one teacher to 30 kids and your TA support is perhaps dominated by supporting SEN due to lack of resource. That teacher is going to be spread too thin. I see it work well in my child's preschool setting but the child to adult ratio is much higher there.