individual planning confusion

i get the whole planning thing and can quite happily do long medium and short term planning for the whole setting and children involvoed but what i don't get is indvidual planning, obviously i plan for each child as i need to allow for different abilites and ages but on the observation sheets i use you observe them then plan for the next step, i get the plan for next step bit but do you then have to observe and record what they do for the 'next step' as though you are following on from the previous observation cause thats when i find planning hard as i have to fit that 'next step' for each child in to my plan. sorry but getting confused with this bit

What you are talking about can be quite tricky to get your head around.

So... John comes in all excited, he got a new robot at the weekend... this is your individual child-led planning.

You notice that John is moving like a robot and you do an observation ... then for his next steps, you might think he would enjoy watching the Robots film. You wouldn't necessarily do a follow up observation here, you'd just carry on with the next lot of obs and planning for him when he gets a new book about dinosaurs and his interests change...

But if John was learning the names of dinosaurs you might say for next steps you will help him make some in playdough and do labels for them, to make a display for his mum... now here, I'd take a photo of the models and labels for John's obs book and that would show... 1. that I'd followed through on my next steps planning AND 2. that John's interest was being used for mark making, which could spark a whole new observation...

Does that make sense? It depends on the situation and the child and what you are watching for from them and what they do...

Hth :D

Thank you Sarah, you made sense of a question that I have been asking myself for months!! Happy new year to all.:clapping:

That helped Sarah. Thank you.