Our Curriculum Intent
For many children, Oxhill Nursery is the first experience of school education. With this in mind, our overarching intent is to foster a love of learning through investigating the awe and wonder of our world. We aim to offer opportunities for them to explore a wide range of interesting and exciting experiences that ignite curiosity and begin a lifelong love of learning.
Our curriculum coverage is based on the children’s interests making each year bespoke and unique to the children attending our Nursery. By following the children’s interests we find children are more engaged and inspired, allowing us to meet children’s learning needs and enabling all children to achieve their full potential. At this age, children need a great deal of adult time and attention and our experienced staff give sensitive, appropriate and well timed support.
We offer a play based curriculum as it is through play children make sense of their world and engage in deep level learning. Young children have an enormous capacity for intellectual development, they learn by exploring and investigating, watching and listening, talking and discussing, creating and communicating. It is key for children to ‘have a go’, to be able to learn from their mistakes and try again. Our Nursery School lays firm foundations for future learning and provides a rich variety of learning situations to enable the all-round development of each child. We are flexible and adapt our interactions for individual children’s maturities.
Implementation
Each year we deliver some predicted interests and projects around the seasons or time of year; for instance, autumn, mini beasts and growing. We include religious festivals and cultural celebrations such as Chinese New Year and Holi as well as some British traditions like pancake flipping on Shrove Tuesday and celebrating remembrance day, Hallowe’en or Guy Fawkes night (see our curriculum overview). We also follow children’s interests, some interests may lead the children’s learning for a longer period of time, whereas others lose momentum and may not last as long. Though what we teach may change each year depending on the children’s interests, the way we deliver the curriculum is consistent. The areas of effective learning are embedded into everything we do and staff are skilled in teaching and modelling these characteristics to the children.
Impact
Our continuous use of assessment ensures that teaching matches the ability of the children and offers real challenge. Children are assessed on entry and records of progress are regularly updated through observation or planned assessment activities. They are also used to group children, according to ability for certain activities and to identify any very able children or children with S.E.N. Information is used regularly to track the children’s progress and evaluate next steps for individual and groups of children. We share children’s learning experiences with families on Class Dojo.
Assessment
Our school considers how children typically develop over time. Looking at typical development for 2s, 3s and 4s we then decide what curriculum ambitions our children will achieve and what core provision we will require to maximise learning and provide children with the tools to achieve these ambitions.
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