Effective curriculum design ensures that an early childhood setting’s priorities for learning are promoted and supported through teachers’ and children’s daily activities and interactions.
Curriculum design is the process of planning a curriculum and associated activities, environments and interactions for early childhood based on agreed priorities for children’s learning. This will look different in every early childhood setting.
Curricular plans and the associated provision of early childhood environments and experiences enable children’s inquiries, learning and development. Research finds that children’s achievement is greater where teachers plan for more structured play and focus on academic skills, as well as engaging in pedagogical practices such as direct teaching (questioning or modelling), ‘sustained shared thinking’, scaffolding children’s play, and extending child-initiated interactions.
There is clear longitudinal evidence from the UK that suggests teachers’ planning for children’s learning and active involvement in children’s play and activity are associated with greater achievement. There is also a strong alignment between the research findings from cognitive psychology and neuroscience about the features of effective early childhood learning environments.
Plan purposeful teaching interactions building on and from children’s play, and take time to really consider potential teaching actions and decisions. Choose pedagogies and practices which enable you to:
"When you're so busy dealing with the day-to-day, it's great that The Education Hub provides a snapshot of a topic so I can get to the information I need quickly."
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Please click to confirm you are a teacher using this resource for individual use in your school or ECE centre.
Yes, I confirmAlternatively, if you are utilising our resources in any other way, please contact us below for permission.
Thanks for visiting our site. We provide all our resources for FREE.
To enable us to continue our work, please take a minute to register.
Thanks,
Nina