Continuous Provision
At Aldeburgh, we use the Early Excellence Approach to support children's independent learning.
What is Continuous Provision?
Continuous provision describes all of the different provision areas which are available for your children to use every day. Within each of these areas of provision there should be a core range of resources that children can use all of the time, throughout the whole year. Planning effectively for continuous provision is crucial and involves a consideration of classroom layout and resourcing that will enable staff to offer a breadth of learning possibilities.
Why is Continuous Provision Important?
Carefully planned continuous provision will enable children to learn skills, will challenge their thinking and help them to embed concepts. It should also provide the context for a variety of learning conversations between children and adults with rich opportunities for modelling and extending speech and vocabulary. It is within this learning environment that the children will also develop key learning attributes. How the environment is planned, resourced, valued and used can impact positively, or negatively, on children’s engagement, independence, collaboration, self-confidence, resilience and curiosity.
Key principles:
1. The Importance of Defined Spaces
Children will be more likely to be engaged within the continuous provision areas if we create enclosed, clearly defined spaces. Creating provision areas in this way tends to lead to fewer distractions and also provides the context for children to collaborate, form relationships and communicate. As we create the spaces, we think carefully about the layout of the room, and consider which areas are likely to work well together or alongside each other in order to promote mathematical thinking or meaningful writing opportunities.
2. Continuous Provision Resources
The resources and materials within each area of provision need to earn their place based on the number of learning possibilities that they provide. We are careful not to overload provision areas with resources as too many materials will lead to clutter and potentially a lack of purpose in children’s play. We regularly conduct audits of each area to enable us to reflect on the possibilities offered by different collections of resources.
3. Consistency is Key
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of changing a room around on a regular basis or rotating resources. Once we are confident that the resources and materials provided offer a broad range of possibilities, we then allow the children to learn and develop by using them over an extended period of time. Changing resources on a regular basis will not support the children’s independence and it won’t lead to a progression of ideas. Continuous Provision should be continuous.
4. Accessing Learning
A well-planned learning environment should encourage children to follow their own interests and express their own ideas. We separate out our materials and resources into small containers or baskets so that the children can easily see what is available to them. Where appropriate, we store some resources directly onto a shadow backed shelf. This works particularly well for storing wooden blocks and for tools and containers in the sand and water areas. Again, consistency is important for developing independent learners so store materials and resources in the same way every day.
