Curriculum
'Learning, Nurturing and Growing Together'
Intent
Our ambitious, inclusive and sequentially planned curriculum is designed to address the unique needs of our local community, and is underpinned by our Core Values: Respect, Resilience, Independence, Aspiration. We ensure every child experiences a strong sense of belonging in a happy, safe, and nurturing environment, where diversity is celebrated, and every individual is valued.
To enable all children to achieve, our curriculum is designed to build sequentially on what children already know and can do. Our priority is communication and language, immersing children in a vocabulary-rich environment where interactions are designed to expand language, encourage conversation, and foster a lifelong love for stories, rhymes, and songs. This approach is structured to close vocabulary gaps and secure the foundational skills needed for future success. Alongside this, we prioritise early mathematical fluency, designing opportunities for children to explore foundational number, shape, and spatial reasoning through mathematical thinking.
Equal value is placed on children’s personal, social, and emotional development. Through warm, positive relationships, we support children to understand their emotions, develop strong self-regulation, and build positive relationships with others. Alongside this, our curriculum acts as a protective factor against health inequalities with a focus on physical development, ensuring regular opportunities for gross and fine motor progression. Through daily routines, we promote health education, encouraging children to make positive choices that support long-term physical wellbeing and independent self-care.
Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) and SEND top-up funding are strategically used to remove systemic barriers to learning. We ensure that disadvantaged children and those with additional needs make rapid progress from their individual starting points.
By embedding the characteristics of effective learning, we empower children to follow their own interests, take calculated risks, and develop the emotional resilience needed to make sense of the world. Our planned curriculum is enriched by termly educational visits and specialist visitors. These experiences are designed to broaden cultural capital, expand horizons, and support the holistic, wellbeing of every child, ensuring they are fully prepared for their next stage of education.
Implementation
Implementation begins with baseline assessments to ensure learning is ambitious, carefully sequenced, and scaffolded; prime areas are prioritised to ensure every child can achieve from their unique starting point.
Communication, language, and early reading sit at the heart of our daily practice, where reading is recognised as the key to unlocking future learning. Staff systematically use the WellComm toolkit to screen speech and language development and identify gaps, while Early Talk Boost intervention is delivered in targeted small groups to accelerate attention, listening, and expressive vocabulary. Practitioners at all levels engage in high-quality verbal interactions, that purposefully close the word gap and support disadvantaged children to achieve. The ShREC approach (Share attention, Respond, Expand, Conversation) is actively embedded into daily child-initiated play. Practitioners intentionally tune into children's focus, validate their cues, model rich extensions, and support the ‘comment more, question less’ ethos to build sustained back-and-forth interactions. Early literacy and phonics skills are nurtured through the systematic delivery of Little Wandle Foundations, focusing on tuning into sounds, rhythm, rhyme, and oral blending to build the essential foundations for future reading success. This approach is reinforced by high-quality daily stories, shared rhymes, and active home-school partnerships that empower parents to champion their child’s reading journey.
To ensure every child can thrive, personal, social, and emotional development (PSED) is woven into daily routines and supported by strong, language-led relational practices. The Thrive approach is drawn upon when appropriate, using its targeted assessments and activities to provide bespoke support that builds secure bonds and emotional resilience. Alongside this, the Zones of Regulation framework helps children label their feelings, articulate their needs, and learn self-regulation. Physical development is implemented with equal rigour; daily wake and shake sessions and planned physical opportunities provide progressive mastery of gross and fine motor skills. Health education is integrated into daily life, embedding a daily toothbrushing routine that teaches children the practical habits and vocabulary of good oral hygiene, empowering them to make positive choices for long-term health and independent self-care.
Mathematical understanding is systematically developed through the White Rose Maths framework to build foundational number, shape and spatial reasoning. Practitioners embed the Characteristics of Effective Learning—playing and exploring, active learning, and creating and thinking critically—into daily practice. Resource-rich indoor and outdoor environments are purposefully designed to inspire curiosity, deepen understanding of the world, encourage expressive arts, invite calculated risk-taking, and foster independent exploration.
Impact
The impact of our curriculum is evidenced by highly motivated, deeply engaged, and resilient learners who possess the communication, social, and physical foundations required to flourish in the next stage of their education. They self-direct their learning, embrace calculated risks, and show pride in their achievements. They become curious, critical thinkers.
The successful embedding of the ShREC approach, WellComm tracking, and Early Talk Boost means that gaps in expressive and receptive language are closed rapidly. Children demonstrate a wide vocabulary, engage in sustained back-and-forth conversations, and confidently manipulate sounds, rhythms, and rhymes. They display a genuine love for literacy and interact enthusiastically with texts. This cognitive achievement extends to mathematics where children demonstrate a clear understanding of foundational numbers, shape, and spatial patterns during child-initiated play.
By the time they leave our setting, children show strong emotional literacy and self-regulation. They accurately label their feelings, use strategies to calm down, and are able to resolve peer conflicts. They have a strong sense of belonging, showing high levels of independence, self-assurance, and emotional resilience when facing new learning challenges.
Children show well-developed gross and fine motor skills, moving with coordination, balance, and spatial awareness. They take pride in their self-care, routinely managing their own hygiene, and take part in their daily toothbrushing routine with increased independence.
Enriched by diverse local visits and visitors, our children demonstrate a broad, inclusive understanding of the wider world and possess the rich cultural capital needed to narrow the gap for our most disadvantaged learners, ensuring school readiness for all.