Our Learning Environment

How Do We Create Exciting Learning Environments

at Kings Meadow Primary School?

Our classroom environments are developed to promote children's independence and their ability to make decisions.  Children have the opportunity to decide how, where and with whom they learn.  

Consistent organisation, resourcing and routines that give children a real sense of control over their day.  

This supports the development of autonomous and self-regulating learners!

Our Starting Points 

High-quality, open-ended resources where an environment responds to young children's needs, natural desires and interests, is key to effective learning.  

Children's interests generally fall into four broad categories, the natural environment, the local environment and the world of fantasy and make-believe.    

We observe and listen to our children as they play an important role in deciding how and what resources we need.  We record and plan from this in our whole class topic book.  This is shared with you via our social media sites

 Children love to see their ideas and decisions manifest around the room! 

We provide carefully planned spaces that promote high engagement and quality learning opportunities.  We recognise that particular areas of provision when resources and organised effectively are the best way to enable children to follow their interests and explore the things that matter to them. 

Hook for Learning

We also design 'hooks for learning' which are carefully planned to inspire and motivate our children to learn, investigate and problem solve.  

We may set up crime scenes, robberies, scenarios - a giant beanstalk has erupted in class! 

Our 'Hooks for learning' may link to our key texts, 

Who ate the Gingerbread man? 

Who broke baby bears/my chair? 

What happened to all of our toys? 

Staff are highly skilled in planning a sequence of learning, linked to our Talk for Writing Topics. 

See Link below

Continuous Provision

Continuous provision refers to resources that are there all the time, and is often informed by what children would naturally do with a particular resource, eg. Sand and water. 

Children come to rely on the resources, and over time develop mastery of behaviour and skills as they return to them.  They apply skills and knowledge as they begin to internalise and make sense of these skills in a meaningful context at a deeper level.  

These areas also include writing/mark making area, maths area, music area, construction, block play, small world, IT, discovery/investigation area etc.  

Provision is fine-tuned as we develop a range of different skills and challenge the children at all levels. 

We do provide snack as a rolling offer during the summer term.  However, at Kings Meadow Nursery we have snack altogether to promote social and communication skills during the Autumn terms. Children are involved in the preparation and delivery of the food as they are encouraged to ask/answer questions taking on a different role each day. 

The Adults Role

The teachers will actively teach and model how to use resources.  They will also inspire children to explore, experiment and problem solve in their play.  

From the start, we set high expectations in how to look after and respect our environment and we encourage children to be fully independent in accessing and tidying up.  

See below for our tidy-up songs we like!                                       You may like to try these out at home!