Our Curriculum

Within our school it is our intention to offer a personalised educational offer, which remains inclusive and responsive to need. We intend that all children will be supported to follow clear pathways of progression, connecting new knowledge and skills across all curriculum areas. Formative assessment strategies will identify gaps in learning and build on prior knowledge, thus bridging the gap between short and long term memory.

We implement a unique teaching offer for every child, with the intention of enabling outstanding progress. We do not boost children’s attainment from an ethos of pushing children to learn more. Instead, we encourage children to aspire high from a culture of stretching and challenging children’s passion for learning. Cognitive challenge is an entitlement for all children, appreciating the need for depth in learning, rather than cognitive overload. With depth of understanding comes skills for life.

Final attainment will be appropriate to each child, taking into account equity for all. Impact will be measured through summative data analysis, which is used as a tool for enhancement and aspiration. The end point for our children, is to enable them to access learning on entry into Reception. By the time they leave our school, children will have learned new knowledge and new skills across all curriculum areas. They will have transferred their learning to long term memory and be able to apply this learning to their everyday lives, embracing personal achievement and creativity.

It is our intent to remain aware of children’s diverse backgrounds, for example racial difference or member of the LGBT+ community, whilst ensuring our aspirations remain bias free.

Drawing on evidence based pedagogical approaches to early years education, we implement a unique curriculum offer. Metacognition and enquiry serve as the primary vehicles through which learning is embedded, altering every child’s long term memory. The expert knowledge of every member of our teaching staff, ensures that learning is systematic, and there is a fluency in development as children progress towards clear end points.

Children are taught to think with conscious intent. They choose how to access their learning, using the cognitive skills needed in order to understand and embed key concepts. There is a subtle interplay between the adult led teaching strategies used to support learning, and children learning these same strategies for conscious application of independent thinking. Our implementation ensures that children can build on prior learning, reflecting and responding to adaptations in thinking. Children are given key skills to set their learning trajectory for limitless learning and thus empowering social mobility. Through our belief in every child’s capacity to impact the world for the better, we are investing in educated global citizens of the future.

Our diversity led opportunities, integrate equality issues relating to race, gender, LGBT+, religion, disability and social/cultural backgrounds.

The impact of coherently planned and sequenced lessons, across the breadth of our curriculum, is that children consistently achieve highly. Through our innovative approach to learning, all focus is on enabling children to know more, remember more and be able to apply learning fluently to all aspects of their lives.

Children learn that our ambitious intentions for their progress, helps them to solve problems and be inspired to know more. The demands of our curriculum prepare children for their next steps in learning, connecting new understandings to prior learning. The metacognitive thread which connects all learning in school, supports fluency in the sequential planning of lessons, and is rooted in a firm and common understanding of the curriculum intention and implementation.

When children leave our school, ready for the next stage in their education, they will understand better that learning is a means of connecting, enquiring, aspiring and succeeding. Children will believe in themselves as learners and understand the value in pursuing their unique interests and fascinations. Every child will have been celebrated for their individuality.

The impact of our approach to diversity, is that children will have a heightened understanding of the need to connect and embrace difference.

Click here to see a document on "What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage"

EYFS Statutory Framework. ... The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets standards for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5 years old. 

The EYFS Framework explains how and what your child will be learning to support their healthy development. 

Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development. 

Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are: 

• Communication and Language;  
 
• Physical Development; and   
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development

These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning areas. 

The other 4 areas are known as The Specific Areas. These are:

• Literacy 
• Mathematics 
• Understanding of the World 
• Expressive Art and Design 

These 7 areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities. The staff teaching and supporting your child will make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. The curriculum is designed to be really flexible so that staff can follow your child's unique needs and interests. 

Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside. 

Our Nursery also uses Development Matters, 2021, which breaks down The Early Years Framework into specific developmental stages, birth to 3 and 3 to 4 year, to make sure we support and teach to the levels and needs of our individual children.

Development Matters then extends these stages to Reception appropriate levels of learning, which our children will access, as they move through into their next stage of school.

Characteristics of Effective Learning 

Children access the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum through these characteristics:

Playing and exploring- Children investigate and experience things and ‘have a go’

• Realise their actions have an effect on the world.
• Plan and think ahead about how they explore and play
• Guide their own thinking and actions, visually, or through communication.

Active learning- motivation – Children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy achievements 

• Participate in routines
• Begin to predict sequences through known routines
• Show goal directed behaviour
• Begin to correct their mistakes
• Make independent choices.
• Bring their own fascinations and interests to their learning
• Respond to new experiences
• Keep on trying when things are difficult

Creating and thinking critically- thinking – Children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

• Take part in simple pretend play
• Sort Materials
• Review their progress as they try to achieve their goal
• Solve real problems
• Use pretend play to think beyond the ‘here and now’ and to understand another perspective.
• Feel confident about coming up with new ideas and create links within them.
• Concentrate on achieving something that’s important to them and be more skilled with their level of attention.

Intent:

Through an enriched story led curriculum reading is at the heart of our school. Methodical process of progression planning will build on skills linked to story language and comprehension. We intend to foster and capitalise on quality interactions that expose children to a wide range of vocabulary leading to quality reading and linked experiences.

We will fuse skills from communication and reading into a systematic approach to early writing. Blockers within literacy are identified and through an analytical process next steps are implemented. We intend to nurture purposeful, meaningful writer who appreciate individual creativity.

Click here for our Literacy Curriculum progression document

Click here for Phonics progression document

Intent:

Within an environment which promotes high aspirations for all, we intend to provide an innovative mathematical offer. MetaMaths is a unique approach that is used to help children’s mastery of maths. The approach supports the skills and developmental needs of each child at an individual level, drawing on their interests and fascinations, whilst incorporating metacognitive awareness.

The language and thinking that underpins MetaMaths mastery is intended to develop a deeper level of competency and confidence when applying maths to everyday experiences. Our integration of maths with STEM learning, indoors and out, is intended to provide context and purpose to children’s mathematical application and reflections. Our intention is to fuse resilience and intrigue into the functionality of maths, as well as into the critical thinking skills needed to solve problems.

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Intent

The personal, social, emotional and spiritual development of children is understood to be the motivation for all learning. Our intent is to communicate and teach inclusion through our investment in equity. MetaMe is an approach to our PSED offer, intended to empower children to make prosocial choices within an understanding of, and connection to, relationships and responsibilities.

MetaMe is designed to support the subtle interplay between cognition and emotion, empowering children to own their own thinking, regulate their emotional responses and behave with conscious intent. We believe that a child’s behaviour is a form of communication and that this behaviour should be understood and nurtured. Through co-regulation and the modelling of respect, we intend for children to learn empathy, compassion and tolerance. Our curriculum and the high quality interactions between staff and children is designed to promote high self-esteem, a secure sense of belonging and good mental health in all children.

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Intent

Our environment is designed to provide diverse opportunities to nurture skills development and confidence. We foster and challenge children to take managed risks, building stamina and resilience. Our systematic approach to progression enables children to develop a range of large and small movements, improving coordination and dexterity.

Through focusing on health and well being children will understand key concepts and have their misunderstanding corrected, transferring learning to long term memory. Children bridge their new skills from Nursery to their home environment, sharing essential knowledge within their community. This will help families implement a healthy lifestyle for now and beyond.

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Intent:

As members of a diverse community, children are supported to question, reflect and embrace their own individuality, the diversity of a global society and their essential connection with nature. Scientific enquiry is an intended vehicle through which children will test theories and think critically. Through a creative indoor and outdoor curriculum we intend to teach children about their own history and to develop a sense of time in the context of life on earth. Our intention is to support children’s awareness of geographical concepts, promoting a love of their own daily environments and also global ecosystems.

As children explore natural and manmade materials, and forces in nature, the innovative curriculum, based on metacognition and enquiry, is intended to support the development of technological thinking and the application of engineering skills. Through the lens of environmental sustainability, our intent is to provide children with an understanding of their life experience past, present and future.

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Intent:

Through Expressive Arts, we are inspiring our children’s inner creative expression, with an emphasis on individuality. We support skill development through an explicit curriculum progression, drawing on an appreciation of their own creativity and achievement.

Our children are stimulated through an environment dedicated to developing musical, theatrical and artistic, as well as cultural awareness. We intend to foster regular opportunities to engage with the Arts, enabling them to explore and be inspired across all mediums. The repetition and depth of their experiences are fundamental to their self-reflection, leading to accelerated progress.

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Intent:

During a child’s time in school they will experience many of the following skilfully designed and implemented levels of provision:

• Daily story sessions – 3 differentiated groups designed to facilitate language and vocabulary development and impart a love for reading and stories. As within all of our nursery provision, these story groups foster the development of philosophical enquires and metacognitive working.
• Love heart group – supporting emotional well-being.
• Baking with Baking Betty – focus on developing a love for baking along with raising awareness of nutrition and the safe use of cooking equipment within Betty’s Pantry.
• Atelier – supporting and developing children’s creativity.
• Roly Poly Friday – supporting children’s physical development and core strength.
• Squiggle Wiggle Disco and Dough Disco – developing physical literacy.
• Forest Schools – inspirational outdoor learning within our motivational woodland environments, creating a real love for outdoors in all weathers.
• Earth Elves – a small outdoor group working on simple environmental projects, e.g. leaf collecting, litter picking.
• Literacy Target Time – a focus on developing writing and letter sound knowledge skills with support information to develop and extend at home to create a partnership of understanding for how writing develops.
• Maths Target Time – a focus on number, counting and shape.
• Yoga – health, physical development and well-being.
• Dance – a love of music and movement.
• Music – working with instruments and developing an awareness of beat and rhythm.
• Global Citizenship – a focus on respect and appreciation for our global community and a sense of belonging to it.
• Visual Timetables – to support children’s decision making skills.
• Attention Autism- to support children with listening and attention skills.
• Computing – extending children’s skills within the computing curriculum.
• Special Educational Needs – Our highly experienced team of professionals provide individually tailored provision to meet the needs of children with additional needs.
• STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths)– supporting children to use the STEM subjects to develop their thinking and learning.
• P4C – Philosophy for Children, a whole school approach to enable children to learn within an enquiry based curriculum and use metacognitive skills to empower their thinking skills.
• Makaton Singing- - to support children’s communication and language skills.

All Short term planning documents - click here

Compuutational Thinking:

Computing is an essential tool for life and every child’s future will involve IT in some form. It is our commitment to support children to understand the language and concepts around computing in a meaningful way. Children are taught how to apply words like algorithm and decomposition to their everyday lives, thus sowing the seeds of computational understanding, application and thinking, ready for future learning.

STEM:

We recognize the importance of giving children a voice and empowering them in a climate of change and development. Children need to understand the relationship between the natural and industrial world, in order to grow a love for nature and a desire to protect our planet. In addition to our indoor workshop environments, which develop children’s skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, we also have a dedicated outdoor classroom. This outdoor space focuses on environmental education and empowering children to solve future problems from a position of education, compassion and growth mindset. The STEM Hive draws on a cross curricular approach to embracing the modern world and connecting children with nature, whilst promoting global responsibility.