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Nursery

Nursery at DNA

At Djanogly Northgate Academy, our Nursery is the very beginning of a child’s learning journey. We provide a warm, nurturing and engaging environment where every child is celebrated as a unique individual. Through play, relationships, and purposeful experiences, we lay the foundations for a lifelong love of learning.

Our Nursery provision is shaped by our school values:

  • Discover – Children explore their world through rich, hands-on experiences that spark curiosity and creativity.

  • Nurture – We create a safe, inclusive space where every child feels secure, valued and supported to thrive.

  • Aspire – We build confidence and independence from the start, enabling children to develop essential skills and a love for learning.

Intent

In Nursery, our aim is simple: to give every child the best possible start to school life. We do this by focusing on three core priorities:

  1. Wellbeing and Belonging – Children feel safe, settled and happy. We prioritise relationships, routines, and emotional security.

  2. Language and Communication – Every interaction is an opportunity to build vocabulary, confidence, and communication skills.

  3. Learning through Play – Through structured play, children explore, imagine, and make sense of the world around them.

We carefully design our curriculum to respond to children's interests, developmental stages, and lived experiences so that learning is relevant, joyful, and meaningful.

Implementation

A Nurturing Start

From the very first visit, we work in partnership with families to ensure children feel secure and confident. We:

  • Offer stay-and-play transition sessions.

  • Hold welcome meetings with parents.

  • Carry out baseline assessments through conversations, observations, and informal speech assessments.

Our learning environment is calm, purposeful and carefully organised. Each space is designed to promote independence, cooperation and curiosity whether in our indoor classrooms or our outdoor learning area.

Learning Through Play

We believe that young children learn best when they are playing. In Nursery, play is our primary mode of learning—but it’s also highly intentional.

  • We follow a Teach – Practice – Apply model in everything we do.

  • Adults guide and model play to introduce new ideas, vocabulary and skills.

  • Continuous provision (COOL Time) is carefully planned and resourced to reflect current learning and children's interests.

Through activities like role play, construction, storytelling, mark making and sensory exploration, children develop the confidence, independence and problem-solving skills that will support them throughout their education.

Communication and Language

Language is at the heart of all learning in Nursery. We:

  • Model ambitious vocabulary and structured sentence stems.

  • Engage in sustained back-and-forth conversations.

  • Teach daily rhymes, songs and story sessions.

  • Use visuals and communication boards to support all learners, including children with SEND.

Our adults are trained to extend and scaffold talk at every opportunity, turning everyday moments into powerful language learning.

Early Reading

Reading begins well before formal phonics. In Nursery, we develop early reading behaviours through:

  • Daily storytelling with high-quality texts that reflect our diverse community.

  • Oral retelling of rhymes, songs and stories.

  • Introducing early phonics concepts through the Little Wandle Foundations for Phonics programme.

  • Book corners filled with fiction, non-fiction and poetry, linked to themes and children’s interests.

  • Home reading books and regular communication with families to promote reading at home.

Books such as Astro Girl, Lulu’s First Day, So Much and The Big Book of Families help children to see themselves in stories and develop empathy and awareness of others.

Inclusive Practice and SEND

We are proud to be an inclusive school. In Nursery, we:

  • Identify additional needs early through observation and communication with families.

  • Adapt the environment and curriculum.

  • Use sensory circuits and communication aids to support regulation and access.

  • Deliver targeted interventions and work closely with external professionals.

Every child has the right to thrive, and our provision ensures no one is left behind.

Curriculum and Assessment

Our Nursery curriculum is:

  • Bespoke – designed for our context, our children and our community.

  • Ambitious – focused on high-quality interactions, vocabulary and conceptual understanding.

  • Adaptive – responsive to ongoing assessment and children’s developmental needs.

We use:

  • Development Matters and in-school benchmarks to assess progress.

  • Daily observations and conversations to inform planning.

  • Termly summative assessments and progress meetings.

  • Connecting Steps for children with SEND.

Impact

By the end of Nursery, we expect our children to:

  • Feel confident, happy and ready for Reception.

  • Communicate clearly using age-appropriate vocabulary.

  • Understand routines and expectations.

  • Enjoy stories, songs, and early mark-making.

  • Demonstrate our school values of Discover, Nurture, Aspire in how they play, explore and relate to others.

Our Nursery is more than a place to start school—it's a place where children learn to love learning.

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