Each school has a different pedagogical approach to teaching in the EYFS, and there is no one right way. All children are unique and have different interests, strengths and gaps in development. Therefore, classes and cohorts of children will have differing needs.
The Early Years projects on Maestro are a framework for the curriculum and can be adapted to suit teaching styles and the needs of the children. The projects are cross-curricular and cover all aspects of the curriculum. However, due to the children's needs and interests, teachers might focus more thoroughly on different curriculum areas at certain times of the year. Schools will probably have programmes to support specific curriculum areas such as phonics and maths. Depending on their teaching style, teachers might want to minimise the amount of teacher-led activities and use the enhanced provision to deliver the rest of the curriculum. This article explores how teachers can adapt the projects while ensuring the children still cover the fundamental skills and knowledge.
Memorable Experience
There are two Memorable Experiences, one for Nursery and one for Reception. The Nursery experiences are usually onsite, and the Reception experiences involve visits and visitors coming into school. Teachers can choose the Memorable Experience that best suits their budget, local environment and the needs of their class. They can use the view progression tab to adapt the activity and assess learning.
Each lesson or activity in the Early Years projects has the same layout. The lesson content is in the top right and contains blue hyperlinks to our resources. Underneath is a list of practical resources and some prompts, questions and challenges to support less experienced staff members. All lessons can be adapted to suit the needs of the children.
Each activity has linked Enhanced provision on the left-hand side. This allows the children to independently revisit, review, or apply specific skills from the main activity.
All lessons link to key skills, and where appropriate, core knowledge, broad knowledge and hinterland. This is so that learning and formative assessment focus on what children should be able to do and know as they access the activity. When planning or assessing learning, use View progression to view previous or next skills and knowledge. The skills and knowledge statements all relate to Early Learning Goals. The Early Learning Goals are summative assessment points for the end of the Reception year, not assessments for the lessons or activities. They are there to show how learning builds towards these goals throughout Nursery and Reception.
Engage
The Engage stage will introduce and set the context for learning. For example, in Animal Safari, children will learn about the different types of animals and their unique features. The Engage stage starts with ‘Pets and Vets’ so the children can share their experiences of looking after animals.
Develop
Each of the Develop stages has a 'week in brief' box at the top that shows the key knowledge, skills and vocabulary the children will learn. It also shows the focus text and any other texts used in activities.
Once teachers have looked at this, they can familiarise themselves with the activities in that stage and choose the best activities to teach the skills and knowledge. Unlike the Y1-6 projects, learning within the Develop stage is not sequential.
This example shows how to select activities to cover the skills and knowledge and suit the needs of the children:
- The two focus stories, Jack and the Beanstalk and Jasper's Beanstalk, provide context for the learning.
- The activities ‘Growing Beans’, ‘Plant Partners’ and ‘Time to Grow’ are practical activities that develop children's understanding of planting seeds.
- ‘Seed Packets’ is an activity that gives children the opportunity to explain how to plant seeds and describe what they will need to grow and thrive.
- ‘Bean Maths’, ‘Bean Games’ and ‘Seed Shakers’ are more cross-curricular activities.
Teachers might decide that they want to share the stories throughout the week and set up enhanced provision activities for the children to revisit the stories through play. Their teacher-led activities might focus on the growing activities; ‘Growing Beans’, ‘Plant Partners’ and ‘Time to Grow’. They might choose to enhance their provision with an activity such as ‘Seed Shakers’.
Teachers can add enhancements to their provision using the Enhanced provision tab. They can also search for specific gaps in development using the Subject tab.
For example, if Fine Motor skills is an area to develop, they can search for activities to enhance their provision.
Teachers may feel their phonic programme covers all learning for the ‘Word Reading’ aspect of literacy and might decide to exclude activities for this area. However, it is worth checking the activities out as they might be useful to supplement their phonics programme and give children the chance to apply their phonic knowledge practically.
For example, the activity ‘Animal clues’ in Develop 3 of Ready Steady Grow is a QR code reading trail. Once this has been modelled, the activity can be left for children to access independently.
All activities can be adapted to suit personal teaching styles and the needs of the children.
This is an example of how to adapt the activity ‘Bean Games’ in Develop 1 of Ready Steady Grow to suit teaching style or the children's needs.
Some teachers may choose to do this as a five-minute transition activity before or after a whole class carpet session. Other practitioners may choose to teach this more formally as part of a PE type lesson, and other teachers might ask a TA to play the game during the enhanced provision time and target key children. Any adaptations and teaching notes can be added to the School adaptations box.
Innovate
Each of the main projects has an Innovate journal. The journal is optional and is designed to be used with small groups. Alternatively, teachers can follow the six steps. There is no expectation for nursery children to complete the Innovate or Express stage.
Express
The Express stage is a chance to revisit, review and share learning.
Ensuring coverage of skills and knowledge
To check the coverage of each area of learning, teachers can exclude activities at the planning stage and use the Intended Coverage tab to check for gaps. Alternatively, they can use the lesson taught function and check Actual coverage.
When checking for gaps in coverage, it is best to focus on Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design. Often, teachers' daily interactions with children will provide the opportunity to develop the prime areas of learning, and numeracy and phonic programmes will usually cover literacy and maths skills.