Bankside Primary is a large school in Leeds with a high proportion of children for whom English is not their first language.  Success for All was introduced into the school in September 2001.  By the end of that year it was apparent that provision in the nursery was not suiting the children at that time.  Many of them come with little or no English and the main aim of the nursery has always been to foster the development of oral skills.  We knew that Curiosity Corner was heavily language based with all the planning done and fulfilling all the areas of the Foundation Curriculum.  I personally favour a structured approach to teaching in nursery combined with some free-flow play.  Our children seem to respond best to this kind of provision.

Many staff were concerned about yet another new initiative, having tried several in recent years.  There was a feeling of “Oh no, not something else” with warnings of “It’ll never last!”  However, we decided to go ahead and embarked on a day’s training. 

It was during this day that we began to think that we liked what we were seeing, the programme looked really good.  It wasn’t so very different from much of what we were already doing but there was a structure that just made such sense.  We were pleased with the materials and were more than willing to give it a go. 

The first of our weekly themes was “Welcome to School”.  The children were introduced to the cat puppet, Curiosity, and quickly came to love the time spent answering her questions.  They all wanted to sit on the carpet; we even had parents joining in!  The rhymes, which link to the themes, were simple, making them ideal for EAL children.  The simple strategy of My Turn, Your Turn helped the learning process with favourites returned to throughout the year. 

The Learning Labs gave children a wide choice of activities and experiences.  The continuous provision that they gave was very valuable. We used the guidance in the planning, adding our own ideas, in the knowledge of the children’s needs.  We were fortunate to be able to resource the books for Story Tree which maintained the thematic link.  There were very few titles which didn’t work for our children and often the least expected ones were a real success, the non-fiction was a strength. 

The children’s language really improved, along with their confidence in conversing with adults.  By the end of the year this group of children were more willing to talk than any we had had before.  One reason for this was the active way of telling stories, which encourages all children to participate; most were by the end of the year.  As these children moved into reception staff commented on their eloquence, this wider use of vocabulary arose from the guidance given.  We had 3 year olds talking about the crescent moon!  This in turn gave staff the confidence to use vocabulary previously not used with the children.

We found the resources at the back of the theme guides often very simple but always very appropriate.  There were a number of items to copy, colour and laminate but they were carefully saved for future use.

We met few problems; time to really study the guidance was often a challenge.  Some staff were tempted to become too reliant on the theme guides so I provided cheat prompt cards to help them.  There were parts of the daily structure that we never successfully fully implemented, the plenary Question and Reflection was generally either cut short or cut out.  The Home Link activity was always done by the same few children; it was difficult to know how many of the parents actually got to hear about it because of language difficulties.

All the objectives for the programme have been matched to the curriculum guidance for the foundation stage, apart from ITC, which is an easy fix.  The Peek of the Week for each theme is an excellent short term planning tool which enables teachers to spend their time on the how to rather than the what to teach each week.

Our nursery children made a very easy transition into the reception classes and KinderCorner.  We kept the familiar transitional songs at the beginning and of course the management strategies and signals did not change, even the structure of the day was very familiar.  The addition of extra literacy elements as well as maths was easy to fit into our day. 

There is time for ITC , PE etc. as well as opportunities for assessment and maintaining the foundation stage profiles.  Children love the 15-minute Maths element that teaches basic number concepts. This uses an interactive structured approach which has the children surrounded by numbers from Day 1. Each of the themes has its own strength be it science, history or geography.  There will certainly be an impact on into Year One.

So, yes we do now have something else that is suiting our children very well and --------it will last!

Elaine McLellan
Bankside Primary School