How to Start A Weekly Program

[nelbel]

Hi, hoping that someone can offer some help...we are looking at changing our programming set up and really like the templates found on this site (they are very user friendly) but we are all a bit confused as to whether or not we write a program in advance or do it each day???

We thought that if we did it weekly in advance it would be good as we could link all the activities to somewhere, i.e. they would come from an observation, learning story etc., as they way we were doing it before we didn't really have many links we had activities put out each day but were struggling to say where they came from.

Hope someone can help out.

Thanks

[fchaudari76]

You would be filling in a weekly one in advance.
I always program in advance and add in "emergent" activities as I go along during the week that the program is actually in use.... or cut off things I had planned but kids were not really interested in

[nelbel]

Hi

Thanks for that fefe, we are a bit confused with it all and we haven't been able to find any training courses in SA to go to that have been helpful. If we are doing a weekly program, we can still include activities that have come from the children, from their weekend sheets etc., and also have on there follow up activities from observations etc.??

My other question is about the weekly planning template on here, what is the date box for in each activity box?? My staff and I were looking at this and thought that it might have been to put the date that would link the activity back to an observation, learning story, parent feedback, etc. Is this the idea??

Thanks in advance.

nelbel

[Lorina]

Hi Nelbel,

Having a weekly curriculum is far easier than having a daily program. As long as you link your experiences within the curriculum plan than it's absolutely fine. When linking experiences into the curriculum plan it's pretty simple to do as you can gather this information from a range of different sources such as child input, parent input, obs, extended learning etc. if you check out the input keys on the templates available here it gives you an idea on where to gather information for experiences from. That's why it's important to have an input key in each of the experiences because it validates why that particular experience is on the program rather than just putting out an experience for no reason at all.

Yes, you're correct the date box on the weekly templates is used to date when that particular experience was documented. So, for example if you had some experiences from a learning story that you want to continue the following week you add the date from when you took the learning story (if this makes sense) onto the current weeks program. This will support your linking between experiences. So, when someone looks at this weeks curriculum and for one of the experiences it has last weeks date, if they go back to that date and check your daily diary or obs or family input etc. then that particular experience should be documented in some form of documentation from the particular week.

We have actually changes this date box and renamed it Date Initiated so it's easier to understand. However this will be available in our new online tools version when its released in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime you can use the current weekly template available here...

Let me know if you need any more help,

,
L.A

[nelbel]

Hi L.A,

Thanks for that, that has cleared up a lot. That is what we were thinking to do but we were just so unsure.

I have just a couple more questions (sorry we think of them after I do a post).

1.The code Child Directed Obs, what is meant by that one? We understand how to link all the other ones but were a bit stuck on that one, each of us having different ideas on what it might be.

2.How do we use the curriculum plan template? Is it a plan of what will go on the program for a particular week, so that everything is in one place and easy to use? If so could it be used by the assistants in the rooms to document what they want put on the program for their primary care group (focus group) and then the team leader could just put it on the program??

Thanks in advance.
Nelbel

[Lorina]

Hi Again,

"Child Directed Obs" is actually another name for "Focus Child". However, with the updated template that is being released soon we have changed this input key to "Focus Child" instead.

The curriculum plan is where you can add the experiences/activities for that particular week based on the previous week and where you gathered the experiences from (like I mentioned before). The curriculum plan can be done at the end of the week for the following week once you have a list of the experiences that you want to implement. That way it's easier just to quickly fill out the template and then it's ready to go when you start on Monday morning and you know what lays ahead for the rest of the week. It's up to you how you want to use it, you can use it as the main curriculum plan for the room (which I think it's easier because it has all the input keys and learning outcomes to refer too) or you can get your assistants to use it for their focus children. Which ever way you want to implement it...

Also if you want I've done a video tutorial for the online tools which shows you how to use them... There are different parts so you can just select the ones you want to view.

Here is the link: http://www.aussiechildcarenetwork.com/o ... tutorials/

,
L.A