Curriculum

Bright Beginnings is passionate about providing high quality care and education for all children. High quality care leads directly to better outcomes for our children and all staff are committed to providing children with the best possible start in life and enable them to reach their full potential. Following the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) learning and development requirements must be met to promote the learning and development of all children in our care, and to ensure they are ready for school.

We believe that high quality learning and teaching is the entitlement of all children and that it makes a life-long, positive difference to them.  We acknowledge that children learn at different rates, and each is at an individual stage of development. We believe that children learn best when they are happy, secure and actively involved in their own learning.

Pedagogy

STAFF

  • Creating and achieving the Bright Beginnings vision, mission and values
  • Having a highly qualified, skilled staff team that understand what is meant by high quality practice and how to deliver this, deploying staff appropriately to meet the individual needs of all children
  • Consistently delivering high quality practice and teaching that makes a difference to children’s daily experiences
  • Ensuring a solid understanding of the importance of pedagogy and child development amongst all practitioners
  • Valuing continuous professional development for all staff and accessing a variety of training and development to support the needs of the children in the Centre
  • Evaluating the effectiveness of training and link to the outcomes for children
  • Ensuring all staff are confident and supported in their roles and have the training and skills they need to be able to perform their roles
  • Conducting regular supervision meetings with all team members to ensure all staff are supported to be the best they can be
  • Using peer on peer observations to share, discuss and improve practice across the setting
  • Monitoring all practice and feedback ideas for improvement
  • Undertaking internal quality audits to ensure quality is embedded throughout the Centre

CHILDREN & FAMILIES

  • Having high expectations for all children so they can achieve the best outcomes
  • Providing children with wonderful experiences and opportunities giving them the best start in life
  • Providing children with wonderful experiences and opportunities giving them the best start in life
  • Appropriately assessing children’s learning and development and recognising where children may need support and acting on this quickly
  • Building close attachments with children so they feel safe, secure, happy and can thrive
  • Developing close relationships with families so together we can best support the child’s individual learning and development
  • Engaging with families and carers and supporting the home learning environment

PROVISION

  • Ensuring that the environment, resources and provision is of high quality both indoors and out; monitoring resources and equipment ensuring these are risk assessed and fit for purpose
  • Operating a robust and embedded quality improvement and evaluation process across the whole setting that includes all parties such as practitioners, children, parents and external partners.
  • Implementing all the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
  • Ensuring that the EYFS learning, and development requirements are embedded including providing a curriculum that is underpinned by the EYFS principles, educational programmes and seven areas of learning and development
  • Reflecting on all areas of practice and striving towards the Ofsted grade descriptors for outstanding quality indicators
  • Ensuring all the EYFS assessment requirements are met including the planning, observation, assessment and next steps and that they are linked to each individual child’s needs and interests and are evaluated for effectiveness

Intent

The intent is strongly embedded in our Provision Maps that represent a set of non-negotiables we have agreed on and created as a team. These Provision Maps reflect the children, their families and the community that our Centre is a part of and are constantly changing with evolving needs of those who access our provision.

Implementation

Teaching at Bright Beginnings Childcare Centre includes working face-to-face with a child or small group of children during the session and structuring the learning environment to support children in making progress through child-initiated play. Sometimes these two approaches over-lap, for example when a child or small group initiate play which is then supported and extended by the practitioner.

Practitioners use prompt and thoughtful interactions when they spot a ‘teachable moment’ during children’s play and they respond sensitively to extend on children’s learning while they are tuned into what they are doing in the moment.

When practitioners teach children:

  • They make opportunities for the child to make a contribution and to make choices in their learning;
  • They scaffold the child’s development, to support increasing independence and control;
  • They ask questions to check or develop children’s understanding;
  • They work collaboratively to solve problems and find answers;
  • They provide formative feedback to help children to consolidate their learning and extend their exploration and thinking further.

At Bright Beginnings Childcare Centre, children have the opportunity to grow within an inclusive caring, secure and stimulating environment, offering space and time for children to explore and discover the world around them, providing opportunities for children to take controlled and calculated ‘risks’. Our continuous provision is constantly enhanced by skilful practitioners to reflect children’s current interests and curiosity. Children have access to a wide variety of resources indoors and outdoors to provide them with opportunities to develop their knowledge, skills and abilities across all seven areas of the EYFS ensuring that every child achieves their true potential. To find out more about the seven developmental areas of the Early Years Foundations Stage (EYFS) and what these look like at each stage of your child’s development, please read ‘What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage – A Guide for Parents’.

The environment is aesthetically appealing with lots of examples of children’s current work included in child-centred displays. Displays are limited to notice boards to reduce visual clutter. Displays include examples of children’s speech where possible and appropriate, and give children opportunities to talk about, review and think about their previous experiences and learning (metacognition).

Students, volunteers and adult helpers are deployed as effectively as possible with clear guidelines as to what is expected of them.

Impact

The core responsibility for teaching and learning rests with the Quality of Practice Manager and the EYFS Coordinator. In close partnership with Area Supervisors, they support Practitioners to achieve best practice by coaching, encouraging, and modelling, and monitoring the quality of provision through internal procedures such as Provision Audits, Professional Discussions or Peer Observations.

All key people are involved in planning and assessing children’s work. We begin our assessment processes through getting to know each child, using close observation and information gained from parents/carers, outside agencies and other settings/play groups child might be attending. Key person maintains the records of a group of children assigned to them by their Area Supervisor.

Observations are written down if necessary and are assessed to indicate the child’s level of development. All these are shared with parents regularly via electronic journals.

Practitioners’ in-depth knowledge of their key children enables them to identify children at risk of making poor progress – always remembering that in the early years, progress can be uneven. Practitioners also identify the more able children (assessed as being ahead of the expected levels of development in EYFS Development Matters) to ensure that we plan rich and stimulating experiences to extend their learning.

We moderate our assessments through internal processes, reviewing children’s outcomes and reflecting on strong areas of provision and areas in need of focus. This informs Centre’s action plan that is shared with Practitioners, management and Board of Directors.

At Bright Beginnings Childcare Centre, we promote parent involvement and support families. Parents are welcomed at each session and are encouraged to stay to settle their child, and they are made to feel welcome to come and have informal discussions each day. Parents have access to children’s planning and observations on daily basis. They are involved as partners in assessing children’s progress and identifying needs, during the induction process, observations feedback, home observations, 2-year-old checks, school transfer reports and at termly summative reports/parent reviews.

Provision Maps

Please take a look at our Provision Maps to learn more about the learning opportunities and practice we offer in each age-groups. For more information, please feel free to contact our SEND and EYFS Coordinator Lenka Melova via email L.melova@leeds.ac.uk