Having been in Primary Schools all my career I have, of course, visited many Reception classes. In fact there have even been several occasions where I have had to teach in the reception class! But I have to say it really is out of my comfort zone – with its differing curriculum, totally different class layouts and then there’s all the problems with clothes and toilets….perhaps it was time to go back and have a guided tour and see what goes on behind the scenes!
Before I launch into my report let me firstly say a big THANK YOU to Sharon Taylor and Carol Bull at a Primary School in Cambridgeshire who invited me in for the morning and explained all the things I should have known, but didn’t!
The first thing I noticed when entering the classroom was that Reception classes are unlike any other class in a Primary school. Of course everything is in “small size” but the layout and equipment are totally different.
So what differences were most obvious?
Well the first thing is that there are not enough desks for the children…well of course there wouldn’t be because there are really no activities that require all the children to be desk based. Yes there are desks and chairs (small ones …its like the 3 bears but they are all the small bear!) but they tend to be grouped and in Sharon and Carol’s class only 4 groups of tables and chairs.
But what is evident are the MATS! …Reception classes seem to resemble something akin to Carpet Warehouse! There are mats here and there and they are not small mats either – they’re huge, brightly coloured and quite fun actually! Mats are an integral part of any Reception classroom not only for teacher / class interaction but also for many of the activities that occur – in fact many children actually seem to prefer activities on the mats rather than on tables!
I actually mentioned one of my few known facts about mat time which was ” Sitting time is the age of the children + 3 minutes” – Sharon had never heard of it but said it seemed reasonable….so I will now be able to throw that into Reception conversations in the future with confidence and an air of “Reception Knowledge!”
Other mat positions were around the book corner and also near to some small building sets – oh and a giant squidgy sofa….I can imagine many a child has nodded off on there in the afternoons!
You have to use what you have:
I always thought that Reception classes always had to have an outdoor space – and this was the case here – with patio style doors opening out firstly into a covered area and then further into a fenced off part which was nicely covered in blue soft tarmac type stuff (you know what I mean) to protect small knees! To me it looked pretty good as having a covered area I thought would allow children to be outside even when it was raining. However nothing is ever as good as it sounds and as Sharon explained the depth of the covered area was just not enough which meant that if it was raining and the wind direction changed, everything got wet…including the children and so they had to rush about and move things very quickly at the first sign of bad weather.
Now it must be great to be in a new school and even better if, as a reception teacher, you have had some input into what you want and where you would like it to be. But I suppose for the rest of us we just have to manage with what we inherit.
However in Reception classes any shortcomings have more of an effect than perhaps in other classrooms with older children. Higher up the school odd shaped rooms can always be jiggled around, the positions of sinks and the class screen can be built into class organisation and the placings of displays and such things as book corners don’t really have much of a ripple effect.
But In Reception these things do have an effect and to be honest it is usually a negative effect. If a Reception class finds itself in a classroom that was not previously a Reception class then the limitations of the rooms become quickly apparent.
Of course we as teachers simply adapt, and we’re pretty good at that (having had so much practice!) but some things just can’t be adapted. To my untrained eye, in the Reception I visited there were a good range of display boards all around the room – however what I didn’t see was the height of the display boards. Of course when it was pointed out to me it was obvious; they were set at a height for older children and as such “interactive / working displays” were impossible to be created! Its the type of detail that only a Reception teacher would know!
Of course as Carol pointed out “we have hanging displays, but to some extent we don’t want these to be interactive – nor do WE want to walk around doubled up!”
The classroom had a large centrally placed screen which had the main mat in front of that ….here again it was good to see that the screen was placed at the correct height for the children sitting on the mat. Its a perfectly sensible thing to expect but its an important thing to have for this age group.
In conversation with both Sharon and Carol they did point out that the size of the classroom prevented activities being left out for the children. Although activities were planned daily it would have been great to have been able to have permanent activity designated areas within the space. As it was, things have to be set out and then cleared away each day.
Over the course of the morning I came to realise that arranging and working in a Reception classroom requires ever changing management. The very nature of Reception is “space hungry” and requires the availability of many resources and stimuli simultaneously – it’s certainly quite a puzzle to work out how to successfully integrate all these things at the same time!
Of course all this management of space, resources and time is ultimately aimed towards the education of the children. By skilfully avoiding what I would consider, the potential for chaos, I have to say that Reception, (certainly on the morning I was there) was a calm, friendly and enjoyable place to be. Not only for the children in the class but also for me! The children moved quietly from activity to activity, worked hard and asked for help when needed….now if only that was the case in all the year groups!
So having described my introduction to Reception as a functioning space; I will, in my next article, tell you how I got on when I got involved in the teaching side of things – oh and a computer program called Tapestry.
Just to give you some insight – the magnetic fishing rods were my favourite!
Charles