Curriculum Planning?

[kells]

Hi guys,

I'm an ECT student (50% through) who was hired as an ECT for a brand new centre this week. The other staff member is not ECT trained so isn't able to offer much guidance about what I should be doing.

I have some questions about curriculum planning. I understand how to fill out a template like the one on this site, but I'm just not sure how much planning/detail needs to go into it.

Do I have to plan involved activities for every outcome every day? What sort of things can "count" as something I can put on the curriculum plan? Could just singing a particular song during group time be good enough? Doing painting?

Secondly: am I meant to plan out the whole week in advance or can I go day by day?

Thanks so much!

[Lorina]

You first need to collect a variety of documentation from a wide variety of sources and from here the curriculum plan will begin to take shape. Using the documentation as evidence of a child's learning you can add extension ideas/ further learning/intentional teaching onto the program. What you add to the program has to have a purpose and a source of why you are putting it on the program, not just for the sake of doing it. For example "painting" - what type of painting, it could be finger painting. The source of this could be developing a child's fine motor skills (which you observed during an individual observation). Whether you do daily or weekly planning it's up to you and what your comfortable with... Also you don't need to add EVERYTHING onto the program, for example if you always have play dough, blocks, puzzles etc. available in the room at all times then this doesn't necessarily have to be written onto the program. Just the "significant experiences that will occur".

Hope this makes sense and let me know if you need clarification!

,
Lorina

[kells]

Thanks Lorina!

I guess what I'm still wondering is... how do you come up with 25 ideas every single week?!

[Lorina]

You don't necessary have to come up with 25 ideas....

Start by observing the children through observations - this will give you experiences for individual children.

Follow Up on children's interests which they may be displaying.

Have experiences based on a group goal that you want the children to achieve.

When completing your daily dairy, you will add activities on further extending on children's learning/development based on what they did throughout the day...

Have experiences based on intentional teaching (what you want to teach).

Talk to parents about their child - add experiences based on what parents have said.

Talk to children about what they want to do - add these to the program.

Anything else that is not planned for onto the program can be added as spontaneous experiences... So, when you start planning you may have only 10 experiences for the week or so but as you start gathering evidence you start probably planning more...

,
Lorina

[kells]

I see, so it's okay to start the week with a half full curriculum plan and just add things on as they're done? We only have 5 children at the moment and some only come one day so I think that makes it a little bit harder. My shift is also 9-12 so I don't see the parents at all!

[kells]

For example, here's what I've managed to piece together for this week so far. I've observed interest in sand play, letters and name recognition, matching, and using pegs.

[Lorina]

Ok, so that's a good start!

So, think about experiences that extend on these interests for example:

sand play -

-set up a beach in home corner
-have a sand trough inside with buckets and spades
-do sand art with glue and sand
-have a group discussion on sand (brainstorm ideas of where to find it e.g. beach, park, what can we find on the sand rocks, shells, treasure, etc.

for letters -

-matching letters to child's names (use magnetic letters/wooden alphabet letters that the child can put on top of the letters of their name)
-have a letter treasure hunt in the sand pit or in the trough (add plastic wooden letters in the sandpit that the children have to dig up and find)
-start a letter of the week - use a table where children bring in things from home that begin with the letter of find things around the centre
-do letter craft

name recognition-

-get children to recognise each others names
-have child's name on beds at rest time or at the table which they have to find and sit, yopu could even do this for group time
-have children sign in when they come to the centre - add velcro at the back of name tags put these in a basket and have a felt board with the heading "Look who'se here today" - each child has to find their name and stick it onto the board.

Using what you have observed you just need to come up with more experiences that support their interests...

Hope this helps!

,
Lorina