Curriculum, Learning and the Early Years Foundation Stage
Curriculum Intent – what do we want the children to learn?
We wish for our children to believe in themselves and their abilities and capabilities, to be successful communicators, to feel they belong and to celebrate their individuality. Our curriculum supports children to develop knowledge, skills and understanding to enable them to reach their full potential. To do this we encourage children to challenge themselves and assess risk, build their confidence and self-esteem, learn to problem solve, develop language and communication skills, build relationships, and develop a sense of self and self-regulation, to be successful, inquisitive, resilient, curious, independent learners and influence their wider thinking across all areas of the curriculum. It is our intention that children experience the seven areas of learning from the Early year’s foundation stage through a balance of different teaching styles and play based learning. This is through children’s interests, topics, and the continuous provision we provide. Learning supports communication and language development, personal social and emotional development, and physical development as well as literacy, mathematics, understanding of the world and expressive arts and design. We believe that all children are intrinsically capable of amazing things, and we develop this by having high expectations for all children.
Implementation – we meet the needs of the children by:
- Acknowledging the four guiding principles of the Early Years foundation stage – every child is a unique child, to develop positive relationships, to provide an enabling environment and the importance of learning and development.
- Ensuring our curriculum includes the seven areas of the Early Years Foundation stage.
- Communication and Language
- Physical development
- Personal social and emotional development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
- Taking note of children’s individual ‘cultural capital’ when they begin at the nursery and build on and extend the learning experiences they have.
- Valuing parental contributions and building two-way relationships with parents.
- Using differing teaching ideas and strategies to aid children’s learning.
- Planning a wide range of practical and first-hand opportunities to motivate and support children to learn through play, which can be adapted and amended to address the ever growing and changing interests of our children.
- Recognising communication and language are vital in all areas of a child’s development and providing a language rich environment with conversation, singing, and sharing stories throughout the nursery day.
- Providing a safe and secure environment ensuring all children feel valued and emotionally secure.
- Using the indoor and outdoor environments to their full potential
- Using resources which reflect diversity and are free from discrimination and stereotyping.
- Monitoring children’s progress by a continuous cycle of observation, assessment and planning and support and act as and when needed.
- Working with outside agencies as needed to ensure all children can meet their full potential and access any additional support needed.
- Developing our staff team and invest in their continued professional development to match the needs of the staff team and the changing needs of the children.
The impact of our curriculum
The impact of our curriculum can be measured by how effectively it helps our children develop into well rounded individuals who make good progress and carry with them the knowledge, skills and attitudes learnt whilst at the nursery.
From their differing starting points, all children will make good progress emotionally, creatively, socially, and physically with our broad and balanced curriculum ensuring that all children have the potential to achieve. We ensure the needs of each individual child can be met with high quality learning and targeted interventions as needed.
The impact of our curriculum is also measured by ongoing assessment, working successfully in partnership with parents ensuring each child is moving forward with their development in their own way, fostering a firm belief that each child is unique, and they have the potential to become successful learners, effective communicators, confident individuals and become responsible citizens and effective contributors to society.