Our journey developing Curriculum for Wales
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Information about the setting
Meadowbank Day Nursery is a privately owned day nursery, established in September 2016. In a short space of time the nursery has built up an excellent reputation. It is managed by a former teacher and nursery nurse with over 15 years teaching experience in Early Years education and staffed by highly qualified, dedicated, and experienced practitioners.
The setting is registered for 92 full time places for children from birth to five years and is open from Monday to Friday between 7.00am and 6.00pm. At the time of inspection there were 31 pre-school children, 19 of whom received funding for early education.
Context and background to the effective or innovative practice
The setting has been funded for nursery education since 2020. As a newly registered setting it benefited from attending EAS professional learning for new setting leaders. This course is led by experienced nursery leaders in the region and helped to develop capabilities at leading change in practice and pedagogy at Meadowbank. In January 2021, it was a pilot setting for ‘A Curriculum for Non-maintained Nursery Settings’. This provided an opportunity to trial something completely different to what was done before. By trying it out in practice, processes continued to evolve, and the setting increasingly focused on using observations to inform planning. This has led to the development of an observation and planning process, which includes the individual needs and interests of every child.
Description of nature of strategy or activity
Prior to the publication of the new curriculum, the setting used the Foundation Phase curriculum and planned focused tasks. As a pilot setting, it benefited from being able to use ‘A Curriculum for Non-maintained Nursery Setting’ whilst in its draft version. This gave the team an opportunity to learn together and try new approaches. It found that the pedagogy of the new curriculum made sense, it has the child at the centre, it aligns well with children’s development, and it was easy to implement in the setting. It was useful and accessible for all practitioners, and practitioners quickly and wholeheartedly embraced the new curriculum. Consequently, everyone is fully involved in the planning process, and all have a better understanding of why they are planning the environment and experiences the way they are.
Leaders and practitioners attended EAS professional learning, introducing them to the new curriculum. Through staff meetings they shared and discussed the pedagogy and the five developmental pathways of the curriculum in detail. This led to changing the planning documentation to make it more manageable, to use observations more purposefully and to ensure that children’s needs and interests were being met. This included developing a process to manage observation and ensure that every child is being observed regularly. Previously, this had been ad-hoc and not as equitable or inclusive as the current process. The current process involves observing all children incidentally, but also focusing on a few children each week. The team will discuss their observations of the focused child together and use this analysis to inform the planning of the environment and learning experiences. By doing this, they know every child well and planning caters for their individuality.
Involvement in weekly professional discussions and analysing observations has helped staff to gain a deeper understanding of what interests the children, what engages them and how they are playing, learning, and developing. This process helps them to understand how they are progressing, and what can be done to support them. As the process has become embedded, practitioners are able to revisit the children’s previous observations, assessments, and individual planning, which helps them to see how they are progressing over their time in the setting and to share their learning with parents and carers. This process is supporting the ongoing professional development of staff, as they are gaining a greater understanding of child-development, and how children play and learn. Leaders provide support to new staff to write observations and develop their skill at observing children’s play. As the process is embedded, and practitioners become increasingly experienced and skilful observers, they are planning more engaging experiences and children’s levels of involvement in their play increase.
Leaders feel that through the support provided by EAS and the professional learning they have attended, practitioners are more knowledgeable, and understand the importance of play, authentic experiences, the environment, and the role of the enabling adult to support children’s play and learning. As a team, they have become more reflective and able to self-evaluate their own practice, pedagogy, and professional development needs.
Leaders use the supervision and appraisal process to identify practitioners’ strengths within the setting and set individual targets. These are closely linked to the planning cycle in terms of role of the adult, environment and continuing professional development. Consequently, practitioners work well together to support each other. Staff meetings and ongoing professional learning opportunities are provided to ensure that the team have a shared understanding and ethos.
What impact has this work had on provision and children’s standards?
Practitioners have grown in confidence and have more autonomy to plan learning experiences. Consequently, they enjoy and understand their role more. Previously, the three rooms (babies, toddlers, and pre-school) had different planning processes. Now the process is the same throughout the nursery, which has supported practitioners to work together and have a shared understanding of pedagogy throughout the setting.
Having implemented the new curriculum and attended professional learning opportunities, the team understand why authentic learning experiences are important. They use their observations of children’s play to develop the environment and plan responsively to provide rich learning experiences. Practitioners have observed how children’s levels of involvement and joy in their play have increased because of the changes they have made. This cycle of observing, analysing, planning and observing again supports the practitioners to reflect on their practice and further support their professional development.
Practitioners are now able to observe children’s play to find out what motivates and interests them. Having attended professional learning on schematic play, practitioners understand that children’s repeated patterns of behaviour are their schemas. This supports practitioners to analyse their observations more effectively and plan stimulating learning experiences.
Initial and ongoing assessments are written using our observations of the children. The team discuss children’s previous and current assessments, to analyse what progress they have made. This discussion supports them to understand and identify children’s individual learning and progression, but also to evaluate what is working well in the setting and identify what else could be done to support children’s learning more effectively. This then leads to further changes to provision and identifying professional development needs.
Through the development of observations and assessments and planning, practitioners know how well every child is learning and progressing and know that every child has their individual needs met. This is evident in their enjoyment at being in the setting and their engagement in play and learning.
How have you shared your good practice?
Practitioners attend termly network meetings, where they have shared their approach to observation, assessment, and planning. They have hosted setting visits and have been involved in the production of a toolkit on schematic play available on HWB.