You can read the our policy below or download or download the document by clicking the link below:

Teaching and Learning Policy

At Golborne and Maxilla Children’s Centre we believe that both adults and children learn new things every day. Learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for everyone. Through our teaching we equip children with the skills, knowledge and understanding necessary to be able to make informed choices during their lives. We believe that appropriate teaching and learning experiences help children to lead happy and rewarding lives.

Aims and objectives

We believe that people learn best in different ways. We provide a rich and varied learning environment that allows children to develop their skills and abilities to their full potential.

• Through our teaching we aim to:
• enable children to become confident, resourceful, enquiring and independent learners;
• foster children’s self-esteem and help them build positive relationships with other people;
• develop children’s self-respect and encourage children to respect the ideas, attitudes, values and feelings of others;
• show respect for all cultures and so promote positive attitudes towards other people;
• help children grow into reliable, independent and positive adults.

Effective learning

People learn in many different ways and we recognise the need to develop strategies that allow all our children to learn in ways that are most appropriate for them. When planning teaching, we take these different learning styles into account eg. linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, musical.

We offer opportunities for children to learn in different ways. These include:

• investigation and problem solving;
• working as a whole group, in small groups, pairs and independently;
• asking and answering questions;
• using technology;
• creative activities, role-play, designing and making things;
• physical activities.

Our aim is to encourage children to take responsibility for their own learning, to talk to staff about what helps them learn and what makes it difficult for them to learn. (keyworker)

Effective teaching

• We focus on motivating the children and building on their skills, knowledge and understanding. Golborne and Maxilla’s aims, objectives and curriculum statement are given to all new families. The curriculum is guided by the Early Learning Goals and all curriculum areas have a curriculum map.
• We base our teaching on our knowledge of the children’s level of achievement.  Activities are differentiated and so appropriate to each child’s level of ability. When planning work for children with special educational needs we take account of targets within the children’s learning support plans. We have high expectations of all children.
• We set targets for the children at regular intervals and share them with parents. We review the progress of each child regularly and set revised targets or next steps, as appropriate.
• We plan our focus activities with clear learning objectives. Written activity plans contain information about the learning intention, organisation and resources, evaluation and suggest modifications. We evaluate all activities weekly so that we can continually modify and improve our teaching.
• Staff treat children fairly, with kindness and respect, and give them equal opportunity to take part in activities. All our staff follow our behaviour management policy and expect all children to comply with agreed rules, to create the best learning opportunities for all. We praise children for their efforts and so we help to build positive attitudes towards school and learning. We insist on appropriate behaviour at all times. When children behave inappropriately, we follow a consistent behaviour policy (see policy)
• We ensure that all activities that the children do are safe – both on and off site. (see outings policy and risk assessments)
• The centre is an attractive learning environment. We change displays regularly to ensure that the rooms reflect the current topic. We ensure that all children have an opportunity to display their best work, including at whole group time.
• All our staff reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and plan their professional development accordingly.  Staff are supported in developing their skills, so that they can continually improve their practice.

The role of parents.

We believe that parents play a fundamental role in helping children to learn. We do all we can to inform parents about what and how their children are learning by:

• listening to parents and creating a dialogue about learning;
• informing parents about topics and involving the family in bringing contributions from home;
• inviting parents in regularly to explain the progress made by the child and discuss how s/he can progress further, with parents supporting their child at home.

We believe that parents have a responsibility to support their children and the centre in implementing centre policies. We would like parents to:

• ensure that their child has the best attendance and punctuality record possible;
• ensure that their child is equipped for school;
• inform school if there are matters outside of the centre that are likely to affect a child’s progress or behaviour;
• promote a positive attitude towards the centre and learning in general;
• honour the home/school agreement.