Enrichment Through Breadth

Published by Newland House School on Thursday 1st of December 2022

There is a widespread acknowledgement that children, and especially young children, need to be offered a range of opportunities in order to learn effectively.

There is a widespread acknowledgement that children, and especially young children, need to be offered a range of opportunities in order to learn effectively. The fact that the Early Years curriculum for Nursery and Reception children has a focus on learning through play, reinforces the notion that children’s development is shaped by the experiences that they encounter. Schools should be a place where these experiences enrich a child’s understanding of the world and enable their personal growth. Offering a multi-dimensional curriculum incorporating many subjects, even for children in the lower years, forms the foundation of this. However, a careful balance needs to be achieved between the core academic lessons, which of course play a significant role, and the creative, physical and linguistic opportunities.

The curriculum content in itself develops a child’s portfolio of knowledge but the opportunities that different subjects give pupils to develop their soft skills during the learning process are also invaluable. Real-life problem-solving simply happens in a subject like Design and Technology, and children need to think creatively to overcome these, whereas in other more theoretical subjects, practical activities to promote problem-solving often have to be carefully constructed. Another example of this is that the ability to think critically happens readily in Drama when children evaluate a performance that they themselves have taken part in, whereas in other subjects, the opportunity to do this may have to be artificially manufactured and may often be based on content which the children have no direct experience of. By embedding a genuine breadth of curriculum, we offer far more to children than simply the sum of each of its subjects.