I am working in a reception class this term after spending several years in Key Stage 1. We have a single entry so I have 26 children in all, although I do have two teaching assistants who are a great help. The children are starting to settle in quite well, but several of them don't seem to be able to listen at whole-class sessions. They disrupt register, storytime and phonics sessions by fidgeting, shouting out answers and constantly touching each other. I have tried several carrot-and-stick approaches to try to improve their behaviour but I am now running out of ideas.
Welcome to the world of four-year-olds! It must be a shock to move from Year 1 to the Foundation Stage and I know that you are not alone in finding it difficult at this point in the term. While I cannot promise to transform the children in your class, I am hoping my advice will help you to understand their development and so accommodate it in your day-to-day teaching.
It is worth starting off by thinking about the developmental age span with your class. Traditionally, summer-born children did not attend school until later in the academic year, but now the trend towards one point entry has changed this. Begin by looking at all of your children's birth dates or, if you have children you know were premature, expected due dates.
Armed with this information, start thinking about their holistic development especially in relation to the three Prime areas: Personal, Social and Emotional Development; Physical Development; and Communication and Language. It may be that some of the youngest children are not quite ready to take the plunge into formal approaches. Think also about older children who fall into this category.
While there is pressure on teachers to ensure that children are making progress, the EYFS is also clear that you must work and plan for children's individual needs. Put simply, I suspect that many of your children are not ready at this point in the year for the whole-class activities you mentioned.
The good news is that there is no requirement in the EYFS for you to work in this way. Yes, you need to provide challenging adult-led activities, but there is no mention that these need to be 'sit-down' affairs. Think also about whether some children need additional support in the Prime areas, as again the EYFS is clear that children should be secure in these in order to make progress in the other areas of learning and development.
LISTENING: A SOPHISTICATED SKILL
We also need to think about the skills that children need to have acquired in order for them to sit and listen. I think that if you look back, you may remember that you had some children at the start of Key Stage 1 who struggled to listen without fidgeting and talking. This is because listening and, more importantly, processing information is a sophisticated skill. It requires that children are not just able to hear the words, but that they are able to deduce their meaning and find ways of remembering it.
Many children are not at this point until they reach six years or so. The starting point for listening and processing is children's language skills. Children have to be fluent speakers and have a good vocabulary to even begin the process of listening for any protracted period. So I would suggest that you start with a language audit of all of the children in the class.
There are plenty of resources that will help you do this, but consider using the Every Child A Talker (ECAT) monitoring tool or the ICAN poster that shows stages and sequences of a child's language development.
LISTENING THROUGH TALKING
As well as having good language skills, which will help children to understand what is being said, to process the information, children have to make connections with it. This is why you are hearing so much calling out. Surprisingly, 'the shouter-outers' are your listeners. This is how young children listen - by talking. In a large group, this is, of course, problematic, as once one child starts calling out, others add their comments. The answer is to split the children into smaller groups.
Some reception classes do this by having some children engaged in child-initiated activity while a small group of them engage in the adult-led story or phonic session. There are other advantages to working in this way - namely, that you can properly tailor the teaching to the level of the children. Another tip is to make sessions as participative as possible and have visual props wherever possible.
COPING WITH STRESS
You mention that children seem to touch one other. This again is typical of this age and may be one way in which some children are coping with what is potentially for them a stressful situation. There is research showing that children's level of the stress hormone cortisol is raised during the first few months of entering the reception class. Stroking and touching others is a known way of reducing stress. So, do recognise that those children who are frequently touching others may need additional reassurance.
Finally, I suspect that you would benefit from visiting another reception class. Contact your local early years team and ask them to suggest a setting that has a similar intake to yours, but where there is a lot of small-group work rather than whole-class activity. Hopefully, you will be inspired by the fun that adults and, of course, children can have in reception.
MORE INFORMATION
The Every Child A Talker (ECAT) monitoring tool can be downloaded from: www.foundationyears.org
The ICAN poster showing the stages and sequences of children's language development is at: www.ican.org.uk