North Tawton Community Primary School and Nursery

• ‘A Unique Child’ -Every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
• ‘Positive Relationships’ - Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
• ‘Enabling Environments’ - Children learn well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents/carers.
• 'Learning and Development'-Children learn and develop in different ways and at different rates.
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• 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.

​Each area of learning and development is implemented through planned, purposeful play and through a mix of adult-led and child-initiated activity. Play is essential for children’s learning and development, building their confidence as they learn to explore, to think about problems, and relate to others. We respond to each child’s needs and interests, guiding their development through positive interactions and use of questioning to encourage critical thinking.

Continuous Provision is how we plan our learning environment. The purpose of continuous provision is "to continue the provision for learning in the absence of an adult".  Our indoor and outdoor learning environments are planned to ensure challenge and progression of learning. Learning opportunities are carefully planned around the interests of the children so they can lead, take ownership and become immersed in their learning. We support the children to develop their skills progressively in exciting, fun and creative ways to achieve the highest standards possible. We also provide 'hooks' or 'scenarios' centred around their interests to support their ideas and to truly engage the children in their new learning experiences.

The Characteristics of Effective Learning 

The characteristics of effective learning are a key element in the early year's foundation stage. They detail the ways in which children should be learning from their environment, experiences and activities. At St James C of E Primary and Nursery School, we believe all our children should be displaying the characteristics of effective learning every day.

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.