Leadership - staff find out how to go with the flow

We have now been planning using the children's interests for eight weeks. Initially our weekly planning meetings began with staff voicing uncertainties about what to contribute. Many questions were raised: What activities had the children shown interest in? Can we develop them in any way? Are our observations providing us with anything significant? Do we have enough information for us to use in our planning?

Having gone from planning in detail for weeks in advance, it proved difficult to put forward ideas with only a few days observations to draw from.

But we managed to plan several, unrelated, activities to try to pursue the interests we thought we had picked up on. After a few weeks it became obvious that staff did not fully understand the advantages of planning in this way. After talking to a like-minded senior colleague, I was able to clarify the process in my own mind in order to give a better explanation to staff. This involved demonstrating that planning spontaneously is like a spiral, with the resulting topic lasting as long as it needs, to come to a natural conclusion. Having used this explanation they began to understand they do not need to plan lots of enhancements that were unrelated. We can identify the children's interests through observations, and then use these to plan enhancements that extend and challenge their thinking around the same topic.

The final part was to adapt the planning format. It needed to provide the freedom to follow the children's interests, with a structure that was easy to follow and, most important, easy to complete, bearing in mind the more restrictive timescales involved.

We are continuing to challenge our thinking, develop our practice, and are trying to provide the best experiences possible for our children.