• ‘A Unique Child’ - this outlines child development and inclusive practice as well as keeping safe and well.
• ‘Positive Relationships’ - this concerns staff and parents working together and good bonds between staff and children.
• ‘Enabling Environments’ - this explains how the room is prepared and the greater outdoor environment is utilised.
• 'Learning and Development'- is the fourth principle and concerns providing a range of activities and experiences to promote independent learning across the seven developmental areas of learning as set out in the guidance.​

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development - developing social skills, building self-esteem and confidence, promoting self-care, good behaviour and independence.
• Communication and Language - developing communication skills such as listening and speaking.
• Physical Development - movement, a sense of space, health and bodily awareness, using equipment, tools and materials.

• Literacy - encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write.
• Mathematics - providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces, and measures.
• Understanding the world - involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.

Expressive arts and design involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.

Religion and World Views

Religious and World Views (RW) has an important place in the curriculum of all schools.  It provides a safe space for young children to develop their understanding of people, cultures, faiths and relationships.  

At North Tawton Primary and Nursery School, we follow the Devon and Torbay Agreed Syllabus for all of our RW teaching.  This agreed syllabus sets out detailed and extensive programmes that will enable pupils to gain a coherent understanding of all religions and worldwide views, preparing them for life in twenty-first century Britain.  

If you have any questions about the teaching of RE in school, please speak to your child's class teacher for further information.

Read Write Inc.

At North Tawton, we teach phonics through Read Write Inc. (RWI) which is a systematic synthetic phonics teaching programme. We believe that every child has the right to be successful and fluent readers and writers and that Phonics and Early Reading is the door to access lifelong learning. 

Phonics is taught from the first day that pupils enter our school. In Nursery we get our youngest children 'Read Write Inc. Ready', so that they are ready for their RWI Phonics learning from day one of Reception class. The children in Reception and Year One are taught daily Read Write Inc. Phonics lessons before completing their Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year One. Where children need further consolidation of phonics learning to ensure fluency, they are given the opportunity through a daily phonics learning session.