The Minster Nursery and Infant School Curriculum

 

Curriculum:

Here at The Minster Nursery and Infant School, our curriculum comprises the Early Years Foundation Stage for our Nursery and Reception classes and the National Curriculum for years 1 and 2.

Schools have a lot of autonomy about how they deliver their curriculum. We recognise that there are local needs which influence how we deliver ours. We know our children love coming to school and so we want them to experience school as ‘Heaven to earth’.

In creating a ‘Heaven to earth’ curriculum encompassing the Early Years Foundation Stage and the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum, we offer our children abundant opportunities to learn collaboratively through exciting experiences designed to challenge whilst building success in learning.

We know that young children learn best when they are provided with rich opportunities to follow their interests and learn together through exploring hypotheses and finding solutions. Our understanding of the needs of infant-aged children is underpinned by the work of our Key Influencers. For Example, the work of Julie Fisher tells us that there is very little difference developmentally between a reception child and a year 1 child, that transition from Early Years Foundation Stage in to Key Stage 1 is a ‘process’ and not an ‘event’. Thanks to Julie Fisher’s work (and others) we fully understand the importance of play for young children. Brene Brown’s work has taught us about vulnerability and shame. These elements have helped to shape our school culture In to a culture where people thrive.

In addition, to support this development, we place a high value on language development and are proud of our in-house speech and language support.

We also know, that a curriculum designed to motivate children, rich with learning experiences and language development, is effective and adaptable for our increasing in-year mobility, Additional Needs and learners with early-stage English as an Additional Language. Our curriculum enables all learners to build confidence in understanding and expression and an enduring love of learning.

The intention of our curriculum is to:

• provide a secure foundation through learning and development opportunities which are planned around the needs and interests of each individual child and are assessed and reviewed regularly
• ensure our children are exceptionally well-prepared for their next phase of learning. They leave us at the end of Key Stage 1 with the knowledge and skills they need to make a successful start to their Key Stage 2 curriculum
• address social disadvantage by providing access to quality literacy, numeracy, language, play, problem-solving, mark-making and physical development opportunities that are different from the opportunities available in children’s home environment
• improve choices and life-chances for our children long-term. We want our children to have the best possible choices at post 16. We know from the Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPE) Project that the quality of pre-school education has a strong link to academic attainment at GSCE (and beyond), pro-social behaviour and higher earnings. Early Years education is very important to society.
• provide children with the opportunity to consolidate their new learning; to use and apply it to make connections to previous learning to help them develop a broad and deep understanding of their world.

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How we implement our curriculum:

• As a Nursery and Infant school, we are passionate about the learning journey and development of young children. Our curriculum is designed to meet the needs of our young children to provide them with rich experiences unlikely to be found in the home, develop a love of learning and acquire a strong set of basic skills to enable them to access Key Stage 2 learning. Our children benefit from a curriculum that covers the full National Curriculum in Key Stage 1 with a strong focus on communication, reading, writing and maths.
• Our leaders and teachers have much expertise at managing the balance between learning through play and teaching of discreet skills and knowledge in order to enable children to achieve the Expected Standard at the end of Key Stage 1 in order for them to be exceptionally well-prepared for their next phase of learning.
• To motivate the children, teachers gear curricular content towards the interests of the children.
• Teachers and Leaders carefully plan activities that are designed to meet the learning needs of our children most efficiently.
• Our teachers love learning themselves! They spend time on understanding how children learn and developing strong subject expertise to deliver clear and confident teaching, which enables children to understand key concepts which are revisited in different ways to develop and deepen understanding.