Continuous Provision at St Michael's School

“Play is the highest form of research.”  Albert Einstein

What is Continuous Provision?

Research tells us that young children learn best through play and exploration. At St Michael’s School, teachers working in EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2 use continuous provision to facilitate and extend learning across the curriculum. 

Continuous provision refers to the resources and learning opportunities accessible to children all of the time within a learning environment. Our environment allows for carefully planned and child led play-based experiences, which inspire the children to consolidate and extend their skills, knowledge and understanding.

Continuous Provision offers children the chance to engage in active learning through hands-on, play-based activities, which they can access whenever they choose. It can enable children to explore recent learning, practice new skills, and follow their own interests both indoors and out. It gives the children time to think and explore, and the adult’s time to work flexibly to support children on an individual level.

At St Michael’s School, we use our Learning Skills Animals within continuous provision to enable the children to be independent, resilient learners who motivate themselves to take on the next challenge and push themselves to their limits and to develop a life-long passion for learning.

What do our Reception and Key Stage 1 classrooms look like?

Our classrooms are zoned into different areas. These areas and the resources in them are accessible for the children to use for the majority of day when they choose. The variety of areas scaffold and support the children’s learning and independence. Our inclusive classrooms are carefully designed to ensure every child is successful. The resources enable children to revisit and build upon prior learning, while also gaining new knowledge and skills.

The areas within the classroom include:  

• a reading area with carefully selected, high-quality books;
• a writing and mark-making area with a variety of writing resources;
• a maths area with resources and equipment for children to explore and extend their mathematical understanding;
• a small world area where children have a wide range of open-ended resources to create their own stories and worlds;
• a construction area with a range of building materials for children to plan, build and evaluate their models;
• a creative area stocked with a range of tools and materials.  
• a role-play area in Reception and at the start of Year 1. Role-play in KS1 is also incorporated into the large construction in the outside area.
• an outdoor environment which is an extension of the classroom and provides further opportunities for children to become problem solvers, work within a team, build their resilience and develop gross motor skills.

We recognise that not all subjects can be taught through continuous provision and some subjects need discrete teaching. Whole class inputs and lessons include phonics, spelling, handwriting, the teaching of English, Maths and foundation subject’s skills and knowledge. Tutor tables are used for adult-directed group work particularly for English and Maths tasks with the teacher. Class floor books capture the learning for PSHE, RE, Science and Topic work (History, Geography and DT). Reception have a maths floor book and ‘wow’ floor book as well as a portfolio in the craft areas,  small world areas and construction areas.

All the subjects are enhanced and skills rehearsed within continuous provision to ensure children know more and remember more. Every day our children get the chance to be an engineer, an artist, a writer, a scientist, a mathematician, an author, an athlete, geographer or historian.