Nurturing Personal Excellence: Continuous Provision in our Infant Setting.
Walk into our Infant classrooms and you may see children building, painting, counting, talking, investigating, creating or simply absorbed in a game of their own making.
To an adult, it can look like play.
And, of course, it is.
But it is also something much more: carefully considered learning, taking place in an environment designed to encourage curiosity, independence and confidence.
This year, Abbey Gate College has introduced Continuous Provision across our Infant Setting, building on our commitment to giving our youngest children the strongest possible foundations for learning.
At its heart, Continuous Provision is about creating an environment where children can access a wide range of thoughtfully chosen resources and learning opportunities throughout the day. Rather than every activity being directed by an adult, children have opportunities to freely make choices, follow their interests and revisit ideas at their own pace.
That does not mean that the teacher steps back.
Quite the opposite.Our practitioners know their children exceptionally well and use that knowledge to plan and adapt the environment around them. Resources are carefully selected, areas are thoughtfully organised and new challenges are introduced to extend learning as children develop.
A child building a tower, for example, may be developing far more than their construction skills.
In Reception, they might be counting blocks, exploring balance and stability, negotiating with a friend, using new vocabulary or working out what they need to do differently when the tower tumbles down.
In Infant 1, these skills are developed as they consider ‘How could I make this look like a real building?’, exploring early design criteria and basic stability.
By Infant 2, construction can look like a cycle of design, build, evaluate, with high levels of mathematical reasoning, peer collaboration and the integration of moving parts.
That moment of ‘Let’s try that again’ is learning in action.
For Abbey Gate College, introducing Continuous Provision this year represents another step in developing a learning experience that is both ambitious and personal. It allows us to respond to each child as an individual, while providing the secure foundations from which they can grow as learners.
Because sometimes the most important question in an Infant classroom is not, ‘What are we going to teach today?’
It is, ‘I wonder what they will discover?’
