By the end of their foundation years, children should be ready for school: healthy, sociable, curious, happy, active and able to make the most of the opportunities available to them.

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  • Over each day and week there will be a balance of adult-directed and child-initiated activities included in our timetable. This includes daily phonics sessions, specific adult led input sessions and ‘independent learning’ times when the children continue their learning through play.
  • All 7 areas of learning are treated with equal importance and are covered through both adult-led activities and Continuous Provision (where the children choose their learning opportunities independently)
  • The Characteristics of Effective Learning (playing and exploring - children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’; active learning - children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements; and creating and thinking critically - children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things) are nurtured but without forgetting that children are individuals who bring their own needs, talents and histories to the learning environment.
  • Children will have first hand experiences wherever possible.
  • Through our ‘objective-led planning’ approach, children are constantly being assessed and this is then fed back into our planning to form the next steps for groups of children of different abilities. Objective-led planning is where the activity is based on the learning to take place (the ‘objective’) rather than being led by the topic.
  • Our aim for our Continuous Provision is that we provide the children with a range of resources to enable them to continue their learning in the absence of an adult. Effective continuous provision should provide children with the opportunity to demonstrate all three characteristics of effective teaching and learning. Our Continuous provision also enables children to return to their explorations and consolidate their learning over the course of a day or a more extended period. When children do this, they can explore what happens to things as they change over time, and make changes to explore new ideas. Continuous provision also allows children to make choices and initiate play without interaction with an adult. Enhancements are made to our resources as and when appropriate.