What we learn
Our Curriculum
At Wyndham Park Nursery School we are very proud of our curriculum. We follow the children’s interests to make sure our planned activities are relevant and interesting to our children, whilst also making sure key skills are addressed to ensure the children leave us ‘Primary School Ready’.
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
The Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum is delivered through carefully planned activities and play opportunities to help ensure that all children have the opportunity to reach their full potential and experience the best possible start to their education. The EYFS sets out seven ‘Areas of Learning and Development’ and together these make up the skills, knowledge and experiences appropriate for children as they grow, learn and develop. They are:
Prime Areas
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Communication and Language
Specific Areas
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
The Prime areas are fundamental, work together and move through to support development in all other areas. The Specific areas include essential skills and knowledge for children to participate successfully in society. Together they provide a balanced nursery curriculum.
The curriculum at Wyndham Park Nursery School is cross-curricular and links many areas. It is our intention that during their time at Wyndham Park Nursery School, children will gain essential knowledge and experiences across these areas, making progress through the stages. It sits alongside the research-based guidance Development Matters and the 2021 Statutory Framework.
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Communication and Language |
Physical Development |
PSED |
Literacy |
Mathematics |
Understanding the World |
Expressive Arts and Design |
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Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning
Learning about how children learn will always be ongoing, for us as a school but also with the ongoing research into the complexities of the brain. We strive to keep developing our skill sets by ensuring that we keep up to date with research and research based guidance.
As a school we believe strongly in the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning set out in the Statutory Framework. We use these indicators to inform our teaching in a practical sense and also in helping us evaluate the quality of the learning taking place. The first two characteristics concerned with engagement and motivation are central to how we work; making sure learning opportunities excite, spark and deepen interests so that children remain motivated and engaged.
The Characteristics of Effective Learning are:
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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 |
Creating and thinking critically - children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things |
We still seek to challenge children and encourage them to approach problems, but we carefully manage the difficulty of tasks by considering the intrinsic difficulty of the task and of course the extraneous load placed on working memory by other factors. The aim is to actively support children to attach new information to other prior information. This knowledge helps us to plan when and in what environmental context things are best explored and taught. For example, building on knowledge about minibeasts in the environment that they were last found (to aid recall), teaching or addressing mathematical misconceptions at a group time (to minimise distractions) and linked to a real context for example the sharing of snack or adding novel resources or adapting resources within pre-existing environments.
You can access more information about the EYFS via the following websites:
https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/
http://www.foundationyears.org.uk
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/early-years-and-childcare
https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/eycc