At Sprowston, we provide a high-quality curriculum, which engages children and enables them to develop the key knowledge and skills they need for their future. In formulating our curriculum, we carefully considered our children’s needs and what we want them to have achieved by the time they leave us. From this, we designed a curriculum that enables our children to learn the knowledge and skills required to be successful lifelong learners. We base our curriculum on the National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Statutory Framework, and carefully sequence the content to ensure children are able to learn it well.
How does teaching and learning progress as they move through the school?
At Sprowston, our curriculum looks slightly different in each year group, to reflect the unique stages of development children go through in the EYFS and Key Stage 1 (KS1.)
In EYFS
In the EYFS we use Continuous Provision as the basis of our approach. We want our children to be able to access a high-quality environment inside and outside, which is carefully resourced so they can learn new skills, practice, think, question and embed concepts. Interactions are a key part of this process and it is all about seizing the moment for children to progress. Based on what the children are already deeply involved in, this way of planning relies on skilled practitioners using quality interactions to draw out the children’s knowledge and build on it there and then (in the moment). This means that the practitioner needs the skills to be able to see the ‘teachable moment’ (Learning, Playing and Interacting, DfE) from the child’s perspective and be skilled enough to know when to intervene and when to stand back and observe. The best levels of involvement are seen when children initiate their own play. We want our children to be engaged, confident, curious, independent and resilient and the way the environment is planned enables children to do this.
However, children’s learning is not left to chance. We know that not all pupils are equally motivated and they do not all choose to access learning in all areas. It is important that adults are always thinking about more vulnerable learners and making sure they are accessing the most important learning consistently. This includes pupils who do not naturally tend to join in and may be on the periphery of activities or lacking independent engagement. Adults must be alert to these pupils, to avoid gaps in learning opening up.
Sprowston Infant School is an Early Excellence partner school and we believe continuous provision is extremely effective in enabling young children to learn. The Early Excellence Curriculum Model, that we follow, can be seen below:
Continuous Provision: This is provision that is always out and available for the children to use during freeflow and challenge times. It does not change throughout the year.
Enhanced Provision: This will include book hooks and resources added to the environment for specific challenges linked to the curriculum.
Directed activities: Teacher-led sessions and specific activities planned by the adults. This could include whole class lessons, group work or challenges that need some adult input.
Continuous Provision
When in Continuous Provision we refer to the definition of early years teaching set out by Ofsted: “Teaching should not be taken to imply a ‘top down’ or formal way of working. It is a broad term which covers the many different ways in which adults help young children learn. It includes their interactions with children during planned and child-initiated play and activities: communicating and modelling language, showing, explaining, demonstrating, exploring ideas, encouraging, questioning, recalling, providing a narrative for what they are doing, facilitating and setting challenges.” (Ofsted, 2015)
Why this approach?
- Learning takes place over time, not just within a lesson.
- Hart and Risley (2005) suggest that children need to hear and use new vocabulary at least 50 times in a context that is meaningful to them in order to be able to say it.
- Children need opportunities to apply learning in many different contexts to develop deeper understanding.
- They are able to return to concepts in many different ways over time, naturally linking to other areas. This helps them to remember more.
- Levels of engagement are higher and children develop independence and take ownership of their learning.
- Children learn and develop skills that are beneficial for life-long learning such as curiosity, imagination, initiative, determination, perseverance, risk-taking, energy, fascination, focus, attention to detail, resilience, enjoyment of challenge, pride, problem solving ability, ability to plan ahead, flexibility, cooperation.
- Adults have more flexibility to personalise learning for individuals who may need extra support within the day.
Enhanced Provision:
In EYFS we use enhanced provision to build on children’s interests, to practise specific skills or around specific events, special themes or experiences, for example Bonfire night, Diwali.
Direct teaching:
Nursery
In nursery there are carpet sessions for storytimes, PHSE, rhyme time and First Steps to Phonics (the earliest phase of our phonics scheme). Children who require additional support will have small group directed time, most often around speech and language development.
Reception
Children have a whole class daily phonics, reading and Maths input, and a story at the end of the day. They will have also have small group direct teaching time. This will be for writing and for supporting children with identified needs to develop targeted skills, e.g. speech and language work, motor control activities, bucket time for listening and attention.
As the children move through the school, we retain elements of this approach, while gradually adding in more structure. This is to reflect the increasing demands of the key stage 1 curriculum content, as well as preparing the children for key stage 2 and junior school.
In Key Stage 1
Big questions
In KS1, the curriculum is organised around larger termly questions, for example, the big question for the autumn term in Y2 is ‘What makes a hero?’ Learning across subjects is related to the question and builds connected knowledge and skills over the term to give children a deeper understanding. This enables learning from different subjects to be tied together and it gives children a purpose for their learning; it helps them to understand what they are learning and why, and also makes it more memorable.
Book hooks
We believe that children should experience a wide range of authors and develop a love of reading. To ensure this is a core part of our curriculum, we chose inspiring books each week to ‘hook’ the children into their learning. We know that stories are a privileged form that helps pupils to remember information, so these books are carefully chosen with national curriculum objectives in mind and ensure children are immersed in new vocabulary and inspiring illustrations that promote awe and wonder. Integrating books into the wider curriculum means children have ongoing opportunities to use the reading skills they learn in phonics lessons. It also inspires and informs continuous provision, so play is purposeful and with a learning focus.
Challenges
Children complete ‘challenges’ from different national curriculum areas, which are focused on key skills and knowledge children need to learn. Many of these will be linked to the book hook for the week. Some of the challenges require direct input from the teacher, while some are available for the children to work on independently. In addition to this, Y1 classes are very well stocked with open-ended resources (continuous provision), and the children have some time in which they can explore their own ideas inside and outside the classroom.
Lessons
The children have daily reading lessons, a phonics and Maths lesson every day, as well as further input around foundation subjects and literacy. In Y1, teachers work intensively with English and Maths groups to provide focused teaching and immediate feedback on their work. This is to ensure pupils become fluent in the foundational skills they need, such as letter formation, spelling using phonics, or place value. In Y2, English and Maths lessons are usually taught with the whole class together. They will begin to apply their knowledge to more complex tasks such as writing in different genres or problem solving and reasoning in Maths.
