Continuous Provision in every classroom

What is Continuous Provision?

Continuous provision describes all of the different provision areas which are available for your children to use every day. Within each of these areas of provision there should be a core range of resources that children can use all of the time, throughout the whole year. Planning effectively for continuous provision is crucial and involves a consideration of classroom layout and resourcing that will enable staff to offer a breadth of learning possibilities.

Why is Continuous Provision Important?

Carefully planned continuous provision will enable children to learn skills, will challenge their thinking and help them to embed concepts. It should also provide the context for a variety of learning conversations between children and adults with rich opportunities for modelling and extending speech and vocabulary. It is within this learning environment that the children will also develop key learning attributes. How your environment is planned, resourced, valued and used can impact positively, or negatively, on children’s engagement, independence, collaboration, self-confidence, resilience and curiosity.

We already have continuous provision in early years and this year we have launched it into Key Stage 1. Key Stage 2 are now trialling the use of an area of the classroom for access to continuous provision as well. This will look different as they move up through the classes, but the purpose remains the same; to enhance the curriculum through activities linked to their learning that challenge their learning and encourage them to apply their knowledge and understanding of concepts to a broad range of activities. 

In Upper Key Stage 2, each class teacher has committed to trialling one piece of continuous provision per week ready for a full launch in September. 

Here are some pictures of the new Key Stage 1 areas: