Community Action Project

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders have identified communication and language as a focus for their teaching and children's learning. Staff implement effective strategies that help bilingual children to use and develop both languages they speak. Leaders have implemented the use of a termly book to immerse children in the language. For example, toddlers become familiar with the repeated phrases used in their book. Staff choose a book for older children that provides lots of action words to support them to speak in sentences.

Overall, leaders and staff have created a learning environment that engages children well and reflects the areas of learning. Children are confident to play and explore, especially outdoors. Children show delight in their achievements when they successfully solve a puzzle with three pipes to enable a ball to travel down them all from the top to the bottom. They develop their critical thinking skills and have positive attitudes to learning.

Children arrive happily at the setting and enjoy the company of the staff. Staff use nappy changing times well to provide children with one-to-one interactions and to build bonds. Staff support children's health well throughout the day. This includes following good hygiene routines, teaching children about minimising the spread of germs and practising daily oral care routines. Staff make good use of the daily teeth cleaning activity to develop good habits.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Leaders provide staff with regular appraisals, supervision and training. Recent training has helped staff to extend their understanding of how to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Although leaders monitor teaching and learning routinely, this is not robust enough to identify all aspects of staff practice where they will benefit from further support to maximise children's learning.
• Overall, leaders have developed a progressive curriculum that identifies the essential knowledge and skills that children need to gain to provide a secure foundation in their learning. The curriculum for children's communication and language sets out developmentally appropriate aims. However, leaders have not precisely identified the progression of knowledge and skills for children's emotional regulation and the development of their larger physical movements. This means that children's learning, especially for older children, is not sharply focused to help them to make the best possible progress.
• Children generally behave well and understand the golden rules. They are respectful to each other and develop good social skills. For example, children learn to share as they play outdoors, waiting for tools to use in the sand and taking turns with the bikes. However, during some transition times, such as after lunch and before snack, staff are less successful in maintaining children's focus on purposeful play and learning and the expectations. There are a few occasions during the day when children's learning is not maximised.
• Staff support children's learning well during the planned teaching sessions. They provide particularly strong language models to support children's communication skills. For example, after teaching children a new song, staff help children to practise this in different ways, such as tapping out the beat on musical instruments.
• Staff use their observations of children to successfully identify how they are progressing and set next steps for their learning. They implement targeted teaching when children need additional support in their communication and language development. For example, they provide children with one-to-one intervention activities. Leaders and staff are proactive in involving outside agencies, including health professionals, to support children with SEND. This helps all children to progress from their starting points.
• Staff provide children with regular praise and encouragement, which supports children's confidence and self-esteem. They clearly explain to children why they have received the praise. This helps children to understand about their achievements and associated learning.
• Leaders and staff value the contribution that parents make to children's learning and ensure they spend time in conversations about children's needs. Leaders have developed home learning packs to support children's continued development at home and involve parents. Parents say how their children have progressed well, particularly in their confidence to interact with others.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance the monitoring of teaching and learning to identify where aspects of staff practice can be developed further to fully benefit children's education
• refine the curriculum to precisely sequence the knowledge and skills that children need to gain to make the best possible progress
• develop the organisation of the daily routines to enable staff to help maximise children's engagement in learning and support their understanding of all expectations.