Curriculum for Excellence in Practice in the Nursery

1. Curriculum for Excellence in Practice in the Nursery Sarah Laing Kirsten Pearson

2. What is CfE? Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) aims to: • achieve a transformation in education in Scotland by providing a coherent, more flexible and enriched curriculum from 3 to 18. • ensure that all children and young people in Scotland develop the attributes, knowledge and skills they will need to flourish in life, learning and work.

3. What is CfE? • The curriculum includes the totality of experiences which are planned for children and young people through their education, wherever they are being educated. • These experiences are grouped into four areas: • Curriculum Areas and Subjects • Interdisciplinary Learning • Ethos and Life of the School • Opportunities for Personal Achievement

4. What is CfE? • CfE aims to develop the four capacities: • Responsible Citizens • Confident Individuals • Successful Learners • Effective Contributors

5. What is CfE? • The curriculum (at an organisational and classroom level) should be designed on the basis of the following principles: • Challenge and enjoyment • Breadth • Progression • Depth • Personalisation and choice • Coherence • Relevance

6. Curriculum Areas and Subjects • Expressive Arts • Health and Wellbeing • Literacy and English • Numeracy and Mathematics • Religious and Moral Education • Sciences • Social Studies • Technologies

7. Interdisciplinary Learning • The curriculum should include space for learning beyond subject boundaries, so that children and young people can make connections between different areas of learning.

8. Active Learning • Learning which engages and challenges children’s thinking using real life and imaginary situations. It takes full advantage of the opportunities for learning presented by: • Spontaneous play • Planned, purposeful play • Investigating and exploring • Events and life experiences • Focused learning and teaching

9. Availability, Use and Display of ResourcesChallenge and Enjoyment Resources that extend learning and provide a challenge, enable children to be motivated, achieve their full potential and enjoy each experience. Cause and effect resources Resources in the garden that encourage challenge. Painting the shed is a favourite past time.

10. Challenge and Enjoyment The challenge was to sort the food and find vegetables for making soup in the water tray. Some pupils decided to make a cafe with the food, they starting serving other children and adults in the nursery. We extended their learning by adding cafe resources the following day.

11. Availability, Use and Display of Resources DepthYoung children take time to process their learning and need to go into each new experience in great depth. A selection of resources that encourage depth of learning are available on a daily basis and these are displayed in a child friendly way. A group made an obstacle course with the big garden bricks which are available daily. Two weeks later this learning is taken a bit further, this time the group call it the balance obstacle course.

12. Depth The block play bricks are out daily. Two pupils design a castle and add people, pets and flowers. The following day the same two pupils make another great castle, bigger this time, using all the bricks. I have been playing beside these girls, watching them and learning from them. A few days later I build my own castle.

13. Involving the Child in Room DecisionsBreadthInvolving the child can offer them the chance to have a breadth of learning experiences that spread across the whole curriculum. Maths and numeracy during snack preparation. Looking at my snack shopping list items. Making the harvest vegetable soup.

14. RelevanceBeing involved in room decisions and activities like recycling allows the children chances to understand the relevance of such concepts to their lives, and grasp the purpose. Once I understood the purpose and relevance of recycling I threw himself into the job with huge amounts of enthusiasm.

15. Relevance I rushed to get my recycling buddy and told him about why we crush the cartons, he joined in with the crushing and we shared the work.

16. Consultation and documentationPersonalisation and choiceLearning stories are a personal account of a child’s learning. The child chooses when to add work and when to look at their books. I know if I ask for a photo to be taken of my work, I can add it to my learning story. I have drawn a sunshine and am choosing to put it in my learning story.

17. CoherenceConsulting with the children and documenting their contributions in the Talking and Thinking Floor books, ensures a coherent experience, bringing many strands of learning together to make a whole. I chose this photo of blackberries and told the group what I know about this harvest crop. I know these are carrots and I told the group we pull them out of the ground. This evidence goes in the T&T floor book.

18. ProgressionThese methods of evidencing children’s knowledge and understanding show a continual progression in their own personal learning and the learning of the whole class over their time in nursery. The nature diary is an ongoing form of documentation. The children take their own photos, glue them in and add comments. It shows a progression of their learning about nature through out a year and a progression of nature itself through the seasons. Progression in drawing skills/mark making.