Manor Lodge has an inclusive curriculum for all, which nurtures every child’s unique personality and abilities. We are proud of our diverse community and celebrate this within our curriculum and learning environment. Partnership working with our existing Nursery families and pre-school settings means that we can begin at every child’s starting point, building on the momentum from Nursery and continuing progression in readiness for year one. Our curriculum places a strong emphasis on communication and language, and we provide the children with opportunities each day to play and interact with adults and peers to develop these skills. Sharing stories and poems is essential and books are at the heart of our curriculum, as we cultivate a ‘reading for pleasure’ environment.
Our practitioners support the children during child-initiated play by asking open questions, extending sentences and conversations, embedding key language and developing vocabulary. The prime areas of learning are part of our daily teaching as they provide a firm foundation in readiness for year one. Our teaching and learning is a well-balanced combination of adult-led and child-led, where children embed the new knowledge and skills we teach during their play. We enhance the continuous provision (the learning areas) with resources linked to the topic, to build curiosity, develop problem-solving skills and challenge the children. We give importance and weight to each of the seven areas of learning to ensure the children have a broad and rich learning experience.
Our curriculum is carefully planned and mapped out and it is also responsive to the needs of our current cohort of children. Therefore, there is flexibility within the medium-term plan to meet the specific needs of our current learners.
The seven areas of Learning
A day in the life of a Reception child at Manor Lodge
At Manor Lodge, we start the day with a whole class maths session based on the mastering number approach, which secures firm foundations in the development of good number sense for all children. We teach the key knowledge and understanding needed in Reception to progress into key stage one. After maths, the children engage in child-led play and are encouraged to be independent, learn, create and solve problems in a range of learning areas both indoors and outdoors.
Children also take part in writing and reading practise in adult-led small groups. They will progress from writing and reading letters, to words and eventually sentences. Alongside this, children engage with independent play-led experiences which encourage mark-making, drawing and writing throughout the day.
Before lunch, the children have their daily phonics session, following the Little Wandle scheme. Children actively engage in learning the sounds and with regular practise to commit these to memory. They apply this knowledge to decode words for reading and segment words for spelling. This provides a solid foundation for early reading and writing skills.
After lunch, children take part in whole class Literacy. This includes activities such as sequencing stories, understanding character, setting and plot, building sentences and vocabulary. Everyone is a member of the Drawing Club and take part in weekly sessions which ignite their interest in texts, drawing and writing.
We also use our afternoon sessions to teach lessons linked to our topic, which are related to Understanding the World and Creative Development. The children take part in fun weekly music sessions with a teacher from the music hub. Each week we teach a PE session and develop a range of gross motor skills throughout the year.
After the carpet session, children ‘get busy’ again in the provision and are supported in their learning by the adults who are playful partners in the children’s learning.
At the end of the day, we recite nursery rhymes or poems and sing songs and always finish with story time to foster a love of reading.