​How to use this exemplar to improve practice

This video, along with reflective questions, invites you to consider the impact of your own approach to the delivery of high-quality literacy experiences. Watch the video and consider, individually or as a team, the following improvement questions:

• How effective is your own approach to developing children’s oracy skills?
• In what ways does the environment of your setting invite children to play and learn with others, to share ideas and to develop their social skills? What improvements could you make to strengthen this further?
• How rich are the opportunities in your setting to help children be storytellers?
• How explicit are you in providing a range of texts for children to develop their early reading skills? Is there scope to improve this further?
• How well do you understand stages of emergent writing? How confident are you that the experiences offered in your setting allow all children, whatever their stage, to practise their developing skills?
• In what ways do you communicate to parents their child’s developing literacy skills? Does this information capture effectively all significant aspects of literacy?

Explore this exemplar

What was done? 

The film shows how community partners were identified. These include parents, external agencies, the Royal Conservatoire and local primary schools. The school agrees with partners what their input will be. That input is evaluated and altered as the term progresses.

What brought about the change?

Staff at Woodside Nursery School understand the importance of involving the whole community, including parents, in the delivery of the children’s early learning experiences. The school is situated close to the Royal Conservatoire and staff wanted to use this opportunity, in particular, to improve children’s experiences in music.

What was the impact?

Through partnership with the Royal Conservatoire, children are developing a sound understanding of important literacy concepts such as: syllabification, rhythm and rhyme. Children are developing their singing voice as a result of singing on a regular basis with music students and with staff. 

Download video transcript

Word file: How the nursery has developed partnerships to support children’s learning