The start of the school year can be a challenge for teachers and schools, there’s so much to do and get started particularly if you have a preplanned topic focus curriculum plan that starts term 1.

One way to support staff thinking is to have a settling in curriculum for the first half term.

Adapted from ideas from Margaret Edgington we used this idea to inform our planning and assessment. It gave staff some structure to work within, we didn’t feel we could move immediately from a formal preplanned curriculum to a child led emergent curriculum. This approach gave the children lots of opportunities to show us what they could do, try out new things and get to know each other and the staff team.