Research and our school experience tells us that young children learn best through play and exploration, this is why we have built on the excellent practice found in Early Years and operate continuous provision throughout early years, year one and year two.
We have worked closely with Early Excellence and Durham LA as well as others schools in order to develop effective practice in this area. We are incredibly lucky as a school to have so much space for the children both in and outdoors.
Within our school, children in year one and year two refer to continuous provision time as ‘Explore and Learn’ time.
Continuous Provision
What is Continuous Provision?
Continuous provision describes all of the different provision areas which are available for your children to use every day. Within each of these areas of provision there is a core range of resources that children can use all of the time, throughout the whole year.
Why is Continuous Provision Important?
Carefully planned continuous provision enables children to learn skills, challenge their thinking and help them to embed concepts. It also provides opportunities for a variety of learning conversations between children and adults with rich opportunities for modelling and extending speech and vocabulary. It is within this learning environment that the children will also develop key learning attributes. Our environment is planned to impact positively on children’s engagement, independence, collaboration, self-confidence, resilience and curiosity.
Just walk in to any one of the continuous provision classrooms and you will be greeted by a child excited to show off their learning.
Defined Spaces
Within the classrooms we have created enclosed, clearly defined spaces. This enables the children to have fewer distractions and also provides the context for children to collaborate, form relationships and communicate. When planning the rooms, we have carefully considered which areas are likely to work well together or alongside each other in order to promote mathematical thinking or meaningful writing opportunities.
Resources
The resources and materials within each area of provision develop in complexity as the children move from early years to year one and then in to year two. As a team the staff work together to observe practice in the classrooms and ensure that the resources available do strengthen children’s learning as they move through school.
Continuous provision supports and encourages our children and staff to have a lifelong love of learning!