There’s a particular kind of Wednesday that happens every September for EYFS teachers. Phonics has started. Maths has started. SLT have asked about book looks. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, you catch yourself looking at your continuous provision and thinking: this isn’t working, I need to change it.
I know that feeling well. I’ve had the version where you’re genuinely considering moving your whole home corner because it’s not being used the way you pictured it. I’ve also had the version where someone’s done a “non-negotiables” walk and you’re left wondering whether the person doing the checking has ever actually taught a four-year-old to use scissors independently.
Here’s what I’d say to both: hang on. Often what looks like broken provision in week three of a new term is nothing of the sort. It’s just new. And there’s a big difference between provision that isn’t working and provision children haven’t had time to learn yet.
So before you start moving furniture in your EYFS classroom, here’s what I’d actually put my energy into.
Routines and expectations
If children still need you to teach the routine, teach the routine. Morning routine, phonics routine, transitions, tidy-up, home time, model it more than feels necessary, repeat it more than feels necessary, and give it more time than feels necessary. This isn’t remedial. It’s the actual curriculum for the first half-term. Children who know exactly what’s expected of them, and exactly how a session starts and ends, have far more capacity left over for everything else you’re trying to teach them.
Keep noticing
Not what “Reception” needs next in general. What these children, in front of you, need next. What can they already do? What are they drawn to? Where are the barriers? What keeps coming up in their play, again and again, whether or not you’ve planned for it?
This is your autumn baseline, even if nobody’s called it that. It’s not for a spreadsheet. It’s so you can plan for the children you actually have, not the cohort you were told to expect.
And yes, I know there’s the RBA to get through, and that’s statutory. But noticing what children do and what they’re interested in is exactly what helps you plan the knowledge and skills they need — in line with your curriculum — for the rest of the autumn term. One doesn’t replace the other; the noticing is what makes the RBA make sense.
Provision
If children aren’t accessing the provision well, the answer isn’t automatically less time in it, and it isn’t automatically more resources either. Go back to your core provision, the basics, the stuff you know works, and keep modelling how to access it, use it, look after it, put it away. Independence in provision has to be built. It doesn’t arrive because September has.
This is also, genuinely, what I’d say to SLT if they walked in expecting a finished picture in week three: the provision isn’t the problem. The teaching of it is still happening, and it’s meant to be.
As the year goes on, you’ll add new resources, build new skills and introduce new knowledge — but none of that works properly until the foundations are there: children who already understand what’s expected of them in how they use the provision.
Play
Play shouldn’t be the part of the timetable we squeeze in once the “proper” teaching has started. Right now, this term, it’s how children explore an unfamiliar environment, build relationships with people they’ve known for three weeks, and feel relaxed enough to learn anything else at all. Cut play back in September and you’re not making more room for curriculum, you’re removing the thing that’s making the curriculum possible.
So yes, teach the maths and the phonics
Of course you should be teaching the things that are supposed to be taught. Nobody’s suggesting you don’t. But don’t let the arrival of the “proper” timetable distract you from continuing to teach the routines, model the provision, learn who these children actually are, and protect their play. All four keep going underneath everything else, whether or not anyone’s watching them happen.
Because January you is going to thank September you for getting it embedded properly now, rather than trying to fix it in the spring term instead.