In planning and guiding children’s activities, practitioners must reflect on the different ways that children learn and reflect these in their practice.
Three characteristics of effective teaching and learning are:
- playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
- active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements; and
- creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
The Nursery environment is carefully planned to enhance children’s learning and development in each area of learning. As the children play inside or outside, carefully chosen equipment, and questioning and support from Nursery staff means that children’s learning and progress is accelerated. We take notes of how children’s skills are developing and plan for the next steps in learning.
Each week Nursery staff have a planning meeting where we discuss the children’s learning progress and how we change/add to their environment to support their developing skills. Some skills need to be specifically taught such as learning how to use scissors – and this is done through our small group times. When children have tried a new skill/new activity at group time, it often gives them the confidence to choose this activity again when making their own choices for play.
