Medium-term planning

Medium-term planning builds on long-term planning. It involves more detailed thinking about possible teaching and learning activities for the next whole or half term/semester.

Your medium-term planning needs to build on your children’s progress in the previous whole or half term/semester. It should be flexible so you can respond to your ongoing observations of your children’s needs and interests as the term/semester progresses.

The example medium-term plan below develops Block 1 from the ‘EY1 long-term plan’. It also shows one way that the Cambridge Early Years Teaching Resource ideas might be combined with other activities to match the needs and interests of a particular group of children and ensure full development of all learning statements.

• Example EY1 Block 1 medium-term plan
• Related EY1 long-term plan
• Example medium term plan template

'Block' in the example medium-term plan means five weeks with a focus theme.  The level of detail in the example medium-term plan aims to demonstrate the thinking behind the planning. Your own medium-term plan might be less detailed.

The steps below will help you with your own medium-term planning for whole or half terms/semesters based on your long-term planning.

1. Plan your continuous provision enhancements for the block
2. Plan outline activity ideas and key resources
3. Refine your ideas for each week
4. Check progression of learning

Click on the links within each of these steps to understand them in further detail.