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
Intended Outcomes for Children.
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
Your child’s learning journey at Oxhill Nursery School.
What do we want for our children?
We aim for Oxhill Nursery to be a place of possibilities where children will be nurtured, where their individual interests and talents will be valued and developed.
As a result, we hope that children’s well-being will be high. They will have a belief in themselves and their abilities. They will know that they are loved, that they are strong, capable and unique. They will have resilience and the perseverance to keep on trying when things are challenging.
We want children to have the confidence to try new things, to take risks and be physically active. We want children to be able to communicate their ideas, beliefs and feelings, choosing different ways to do this. Some children will choose to dance, others to build or draw or sing. They will have experienced and remembered a wide range of words through stories, rhymes and poems. They will have the skills to make friends and will show kindness to others. They will know how to look after themselves, their friends, their school and the environment.
They will know about important mathematical and scientific concepts. They will have an understanding and respect of the world around them and the world beyond. They will have a desire to learn and be ready for their next stage in education.
How do we observe children and monitor progress?
We have chosen to adopt an assessment system called ‘Observations of Play And Learning’ (OP&L)- this has been written by the BEYA group of Nursery School Head Teachers who have worked very closely with a range of other professionals.
We feel that OP&L is an effective, meaningful and principled assessment system, which allows us to work very closely with all of our children, to really understand their play, follow their interests and ideas and provide effective next steps for their learning. The observations and assessments made enable us to discuss, reflect and plan our environment and learning opportunities.
By effective, we mean a method of assessment that ensures that all children are supported in reaching significant milestones.
By meaningful, we mean that the observations made inform our everyday practice and curriculum. By gaining an insight into children’s thinking, feeling and needs we can plan our environment and actions to provide future possibilities for learning.
By principled, we mean that our focus is on observing to understand children. We will not test children or seek unnecessary knowledge. Children are recognised as individuals, not as a percentage.
We will not spend unnecessary amounts of time writing observations or gathering evidence of children’s learning. We believe that if we are capturing the moment, we cannot be part of the moment. Instead we have structures in place that enable us to regularly discuss each child as a team and with their family.
Observation of Play and Learning (OP&L)
Children’s learning will be closely monitored in collaboration with parents and families, to ensure they are supported to reach significant milestones for their age.
OP&L works on the basis of having very simple, six-monthly child developmental milestones, which we use to monitor children’s development. These milestones reflect what we believe a ‘typical’ child, should be able to achieve. We know that not all children will have ‘typical’ development. OP&L allows us to tell and celebrate each child’s story and focus on the support they need from us.
The observations and assessments that we make are called ‘spotlights’. We observe children’s innovation, their creativity, their ideas, their intents and feelings. The insight that we gain enables us to discuss, reflect and plan our environment to support and shape future learning.
OP&L follows a simple, three step cycle:
The process…
Throughout the year there are opportunities for parents to come together with us to talk about their child and their learning.
Settling in: Soon after children have started nursery, we meet with parents and carers to talk about how their child has settled in. We share information, stories and photographs. We look at the child development milestones together and listen to, and discuss parents’ thoughts and feelings about their child and their learning.
Spotlight: Each child has two ‘spotlight’ points in the year. We share the spotlight and talk to parents about their child’s learning and development. Together, we discuss any interests that their child has, celebrating their progress and achievements and looking what we can do to support them.
We use an online platform called Class Dojo to share photos and assessments. This platform has the option for families to contribute to their child’s profile, where they can add photos or descriptions of significant moments in their child’s development that they would like to share with us.
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