Building a quality curriculum for the early years

With the early years being a key focus on the new government’s education and childcare plans, it’s time to ask, ‘Does our early years curriculum provide our children with the best quality of education?’ In this blog, we highlight some of Labour’s plans for the early years sector and explain how Cornerstones’ early years curriculum will help you to provide the very highest quality of education to your youngest children.

New government initiatives

Labour’s policies for the early years sector include the expansion of available nursery places; extended childcare funding plans; an early year’s numeracy drive; additional funding for early-language intervention; and the improved recruitment and retention of early years staff. While the focus on the early years sector is welcome, it is still important for nurseries and Early Years Foundation Stage practitioners and leaders to continue their own drive for a quality curriculum. Here are some of the ways we help schools to achieve this this.

1. Broad and balanced coverage

We’ve carefully designed our EYFS curriculum to help you meet national early years requirements, prioritise a play-based ethos and provide broad and balanced activities across all areas of learning. The curriculum includes over 20 fully resourced projects for nursery and reception, aligned with the early learning goals and Development Matters for England, and the statements of what matters in the Curriculum for Wales.

2. Building the foundations of learning

The early years curriculum projects have been written in sequence and provide progression across a child’s time in the EYFS. Topics are vibrant and designed to inspire awe and wonder about the world. We have carefully identified key skills, core knowledge and vocabulary within each project to provide the foundations for learning and prepare children for KS1 and beyond.

3. Play-based and language-rich

The early years curriculum projects have been created with children’s physical, social and emotional development in mind. They encourage a play-based approach and offer a balance between teacher-directed and child-led learning. We’ve put children’s language development at the heart of the curriculum, so each project is built around stories and includes a wealth of communication activities.

‘We’ve found the structure of new projects around key texts has given us a clear focus for language. We’ve got amazing writing pieces from those activities.’

Lauren Ward, Reception teacher, Wigan

4. Early reading development

Each project contains a story pack to support early reading development. We have chosen stories with engaging illustrations and strong narratives that will extend children’s vocabulary. This collection of stories provides opportunities for children to associate with the characters or help them understand the lives, experiences and perspectives of others. Each story pack follows a structure so children can hear the story multiple times and build their understanding as they listen. We aim to provide children with a bank of quality stories they love so they can revisit and retell them independently. The story packs are fully resourced and provide teacher information to guide practitioners through each stage.

5. Pre-literacy programme

To further support nursery and preschool children with early reading development, we provide termly pre-literacy packs. This fully resourced programme supports children to develop the communication, language and literacy skills needed as they progress into the reception year.

6. Support for mixed-age classes

We understand the challenges of teaching a mixed EYFS and KS1 class. To support children of all ages to meet curriculum requirements at an appropriate level, we have created a series of mixed-age planning documents. All activities in the projects are differentiated for both nursery and reception, and provide supporting enhanced provision ideas.

7. Flexible planning

To help you make each lesson your own, the content is completely editable on Maestro, our online curriculum platform. To provide a consistent pedagogical approach, every project follows Cornerstones’ unique four-stage approach to learning: Engage, Develop, Innovate and Express.

8. Ongoing support

To help you make the most of the curriculum, we offer free ongoing online support, guidance and training when you need it.

9. The role of resources

We believe that the best approach to learning in the early years is through practical, experiential and play-based activities. However, where appropriate, the new projects include carefully designed child-focused resources to support practical tasks.

‘The new early years projects are structured really well and offer a good balance of teacher-directed and child-led activities. What we enjoy about Cornerstones is that it offers us that flexibility.’