Early level
The environment for learning in pre-school settings promotes a high degree of challenge and enjoyment and personalisation and choice through planned opportunities to explore different activities, materials and contexts and imaginative, creative use of both indoor and outdoor learning environments. Learning within any particular activity will prompt different aspects of learning in individual ways for children. Approaches which involve children in planning and respond flexibly to their interests and needs also contribute to personalisation and choice.
Learning activities in pre-school settings can provide rich opportunities for progression and depth of learning. The learning activities and environment should be planned and organised to offer opportunities to extend skills (for example language skills) and deepen understanding. Active learning will promote the development of logical and creative thinking and encourage a problem-solving approach.
The adult role in supporting progression is very important. It will vary, sometimes observing and supporting, other times facilitating and skilfully intervening in, or extending, the activities and experiences to promote progression and learning in depth. Direct teaching and focused work with groups or individual children will help to develop specific skills and knowledge in particular areas of learning or to take account of additional support needs. The balance between self-directed and adult-initiated learning opportunities needs to be carefully considered and monitored.
Learning through a wide range of well-designed activities will also offer relevance, coherence and breadth. Activities will often build directly on what is familiar to the child and the local environment and events can be used to provide interesting, real-life contexts for learning. Learning in a variety of contexts supports and reinforces the development of numeracy, literacy and health and wellbeing across the curriculum.
The experiences and outcomes at the early level can be used in suitable combinations to plan motivating and challenging activities. Taken together, as appropriate to the stage of development of each child, these activities should provide breadth of learning across the curriculum areas. Activities planned in this way and which build on what is familiar should enable children to make connections, give coherence to their learning and enable them to understand the relevance of what they are learning.
More information
The principles must be taken into account for all children and young people. They apply to the curriculum both at an organisational level and in the classroom and in any setting where children and young people are learners.
The principles will have different emphases as a young person learns and develops.