Elkesley Primary And Nursery School

Headland Avenue, Retford, Nottinghamshire, DN22 8AQ



Foundation - Mrs Griffiths

Reception & Part Time Children

As you know, in Foundation we have changed from topic planning to planning in the moment.  Planning in the moment means we follow the children’s lead and interests and progress their learning in a way which excites them and makes them feel valued and that they have ownership over their learning.

Alongside this, each week we have 2 focus children.  These children are worked with in the same way as all other children, but we record all teachable moments which take place.  A teachable moment is a moment when a child asks something, shows they are struggling with something or shows an interest in something.  The adult’s role is to recognise and then develop this moment into teaching and therefore allow the child to progress naturally.  An example of a teachable moment could be something as small as a child asks what a word means or notices a change in the natural environment to struggling to balance across a beam.  Once the adult has built upon the child’s learning, they are then able to demonstrate and explain their new knowledge, showing that learning has taken place.

Recently, your children have developed their own mini topics through their interests and questions around recycling, saving the oceans, plant growth, animal facts and celebrations.

In much the same way, our literacy and numeracy lessons are based around things which interest the children so whilst we do have things we have to cover such as height, weight and money in numeracy and sentence writing in literacy these are all done based on the children’s interest.  For example, the children have absolutely loved our tadpoles so lots of our writing has been done based on them recently.