In Early Years, every child matters and all children are provided with the best possible start in life through a personalised and creative curriculum approach. Our intent is to provide a nurturing, highly structured, and engaging learning environment where every child feels safe, valued, and empowered to take their first steps on their individual learning journey.
- We provide pupils with opportunities to engage in learning, within class, school and the local community.
- We work closely with families to understand each child’s context and ensure consistency between school and home.
- We work in close collaboration with SaLT, OT and other therapies to ensure learning is embedded across all areas.
- Topics are explored through a variety of media and experiences to promote engagement, independence and generalisation.
Key Aims of Our Curriculum:
- Develop Communication and Interaction Skills We prioritise total communication approaches (e.g., PECS, Signalong, objects of reference, AAC) to enable every child to express their needs, make choices, and interact meaningfully with others. The development of functional communication underpins all learning.
- Support Emotional Regulation and Wellbeing Our curriculum incorporates sensory integration and emotional regulation strategies (such as zones of regulation, sensory diets, and predictable routines) to help pupils feel calm, secure, and ready to engage in learning.
- Foster Independence and Self-Care Building independence is central to our intent. Through consistent routines and personalised support, pupils are taught foundational self-help and life skills including toileting, dressing, feeding, and managing transitions.
- Enable Engagement Through Play and Exploration We provide a rich, multi-sensory, play-based curriculum rooted in engagement and curiosity. Our approach is tailored to meet pupils’ learning styles and processing needs, promoting active exploration and joyful learning.
- Lay the Foundations for Learning and Cognition We use a developmental curriculum that supports pupils’ early cognitive skills, including attention, problem-solving, memory, and cause-and-effect understanding. Learning is highly individualised and broken into small, achievable steps.
- Encourage Positive Relationships and Social Development We focus on developing pupils’ ability to engage with others, build trusting relationships, and participate in parallel or shared activities. Social stories and modelling support social understanding in an autism-friendly way.
- Celebrate Individual Progress We recognise that progress may not follow a linear path. Each child’s learning journey is uniquely mapped and celebrated using a combination of EHCP outcomes, engagement models, and pre-formal to semi-formal learning pathways.
Our Curriculum – Learning to Learn….
Planning is based on a thematic approach and the needs of the pupils as outlined in their EHCP’s. Our topics advocate creativity, curiosity and active engagement. We use Early Learning Goals, Development Matters, Characteristics of Effective Learning and KS1 curriculum to inform planning. We also refer to the developmental steps as laid out in ‘Connecting Steps’. However, each child is unique and therefore learning needs to be individualised and teaching varied and specific to each child.
The delivery of the curriculum is based around learning through play, active learning, exploration, curiosity and becoming a critical thinker. Our three-year topic cycle ensures a breadth of learning opportunities. Every pupil’s curriculum is individualised and based on their goals from their EHCP. The classroom environments are crucial so that children can be curious in a calm setting where they can explore activities, engage in interactions and learn how to self-regulate using resources and spaces around them
Reading is a key part of every pupil’s learning and development. Opportunities to learn to read at a level that is suitable, achievable and enriching for every pupil is key. Strategies used to teach reading are tailored to each individual child’s need, and for those ready to use a structure phonics approach, we use ‘Read Write Inc’. We also use “See and Learn” for those children who are learning at a whole word level.
Wider learning is supported by our RDA lessons and trampolining sessions at a local sports centre. These provide opportunities for therapy, achievement, and enjoyment, improving health, wellbeing and self-confidence, and benefiting mobility and co-ordination. Every class goes out on a weekly minibus trip exploring areas in our local community, going shopping or visiting new places.
Finally, communication is central to all we do so we ensure pupils have a purposeful and effective means of communication across all areas of their day. Our core objective is to empower the pupils to express themselves and connect with others. At Beaucroft, Total Communication is at the heart of everything the children and staff do. We continually support the children to develop their communication in every situation with support from our Speech and language therapist and communication team.
How are parents involved?
We work closely with parents to ensure a smooth transition from home to school. Our youngest learners initially attend Beaucroft on a part time basis. We visit new intake children at pre-school or school before they start at Beaucroft and do home visits to our reception aged homes in the first few weeks of school. Parents receive a “Guide to Your Child Starting School” pack and a transition book and we offer weekly transition sessions during the summer term.
Close contact is kept with parents through a home-school link book, emails, regular parent’s evenings, and coffee mornings and if required, online meetings if desired through ‘Teams’. Parents also receive information offering advice on ways to support their child’s learning at home. Many of our parents choose to attend a parent support group. Some parents engage with the ‘Early Bird Plus’ programme (for parents of pupils with an ASC diagnosis) and there are also informal coffee mornings where parents can share and get together.