It’s full STEAM ahead at Great Ballard as Pre Prep launches an exciting new curriculum. An emphasis on the STEAM framework, which interrelates Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths creates hands-on experiences to spark children’s curiosity and strengthen and scaffold their educational development.
At Great Ballard, the Pre Prep teachers aim to inspire the very youngest learners with these real world learning skills. Here the nursery children are just as likely to be exploring in a mud laboratory as a mud kitchen! Staff are passionate about developing skills alongside knowledge to ensure a relevant and rounded education. Pupils are given the opportunity to explore problems every day; well planned, yet open activities, which aim to empower and enable children to discover solutions, develop creativity, question and most importantly learn together.
Alongside a daily literacy and numeracy focus, project based learning from the youngest age encourages collaboration and discussion.The Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classrooms, set around their newly designed outdoor play and adventure space, fizz with wonder and excitement, as groups of children steer their own learning. These young discoverers are also responsible for recording, predicting and analysing the outcomes of their work, whether that’s Reception working out how to measure a dinosaur (hint: their first problem was making her stand still!) or Year 2 planning experiments to test magnetic force.
Head of Pre Prep, Steffi Wright says, “Our new STEAM approach builds on the great work our staff and children were already doing, but allows us to go even further, reimagining our curriculum around the key principles of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths. We are already seeing the positive impact of this approach on our pupils’ skills of communication, creativity, and collaboration as well as critical thinking. When they take ownership of their own learning, it increases their drive to succeed and helps them to practise resilience. As their skills grow and emerge, they feel empowered to ask more of the “how” and “why” questions and that’s so powerful, both as they move into the Prep and Senior school here at Great Ballard and into the real world beyond.”