An easy way to introduce children’s individual planning
For many early years practitioners, the thought of introducing children’s individual planning can be stressful, and many practitioners don’t know where to start with the idea. Children’s individual planning can bring many benefits for both practitioners and children. For practitioners, it enables the key person to get fully to know exactly where the child is at in their development, and this will help complete tracking documents and progress summary reports. For children, this type of planning identifies children’s interests and the key person can use this information to plan the child’s next steps.
When an Ofsted inspector visits to carry out an Ofsted inspection, they are very keen on seeing how practitioners identify and plan for children’s next steps. By introducing children’s individual planning, this can help meet Ofsted approval. For practitioners who have a large keep group, there can be challenges to overcome when introducing children’s individual planning; some settings use one sheet that contains all children’s interest identified through observations, whereas other settings have an individual sheet containing the child’s interests and next steps.
Creating a child’s individual planning sheet
When creating a child’s individual planning sheet think about how best to organise the sheet. Would it be easier to have all of the key children names on one sheet or would it be more effective for each key child to have their own individual planning sheet? An easy format to use it is to break this down into weeks, e.g., week 1, week two etc.eg. Therefore one sheet can last for a month. On the individual planning sheet include some information about the child, e.g., name, date of birth, name of key person, sessions attending. Other boxes that should be included with each week should be a box containing child’s interests and a next step box. It is also recommended to include an adult initiated activity section. Children’s interests should be identified through various sources such as observations and conversations with parents. If a child has recently had their 2-year integrated review information from this may be shared with the key person and this can be included on their individual plan. Using one sheet that contain children’s and next tapes can help practitioners take a quick glance of what the child has been interested in over a period of time.
Children’s next steps should follow on from the previous week’s observations, it is practitioners role to reflect on what the child has enjoyed doing and plan next steps according to the child interests. Conducting observations are crucial in helping complete children’s individual planning aswell as assessments records.
When introducing children’s individual planning it may also be wise to be aware of continuous provision planning. This can be as simple as creating a sheet with the areas of the room and writing a list of the resources readily available in each area. Then when enhancing the areas based on the children’s individual planning record the resources in the enhanced section.
How in your setting do you do children’s individual planning?