We use Drawing Club and Curious Quests to introduce early writing, spark curiosity, add magic to story making and promote an ambitious vocabulary. We teach through books, non-fiction topics, poetry and traditional tales. Each learning focus is based on the children’s learning and interest. All of the overarching themes have resources and activities ready to use in the continuous and enhanced provision. Using books in this way teaches children that books and reading form the basis of all learning and help them develop an appreciation for books and a desire to read for pleasure.
Through our ambitious curriculum, we teach through a range of teaching methods including child-initiated learning, whole class teaching, group teaching, investigations and problem solving, and independent learning. Some skills need to be taught discretely, so will be teacher led, but the majority of activities will be taught through play based activities. All activities are expertly modelled, and children are given sufficient time, support and resources to repeat and practise them.
We follow the Read Write Inc Phonics scheme and regularly monitor progress, assessing sound knowledge and reading skills as the children progress.
We also follow the White Rose scheme of learning in Maths, along with expertly trained teachers to promote discreet Mathematical skills and fluency.
We monitor access to each area of provision by setting rainbow challenges. Children access each challenge independently after being modelled. Once they have completed the task, they tell an adult who will question the child on what they have learnt and the skill they used to achieve it (in appropriate child-friendly language). The adult will then support and extend the challenge and vocabulary appropriately, to move learning on and improve recall and retrieval further. The child will collect a coloured lollystick to add to their rainbow pot.