Brearley Nursery School
The nursery has been actively involved in a number of projects over the past few years. We see this as part of our development. It provides staff with the opportunity to reflect on their practice and the way children learn and move forward, all of which is of benefit the children. Projects enable staff to update their professional development and influence practice.
Projects we are involved in include
| ABC-Project | Effective Early Learning Project | Positive Achievement in African Caribbean Pupils Project |
| Parent/Cares projects | Parent Volunteer Course | Talk and Learning |
| Portage |
This web page is the result of the ABC project!!
With a lot of help from our friends at The University of Central England we have accessed the Internet and are creating these pages. As a staff we are on a very steep learning curve when it comes to Information Technology and it forms a significant part of our school development plan. However over the past year our involvement in the project has given us all access to training and support and we are improving - slowly!! We hope, eventually, that the children will be able to send E mails to other nurseries.
Effective Early Learning Project
Brearley Nursery along with other nurseries in Birmingham participated in the EEL project working with Christine Pascal from Worcester College of Higher Education. This project involved undertaking a case study of the nursery, looking a children’s involvement in activities as well as the role of the adult. It provided the nursery with a clear development plan and has been very influential in our practice. As a nursery our child observation sheets include involvement levels for activities. More recently we have started using a Well Being screening to enable us to assess and plan for children’s needs. As a school we hope to continue to be involved in the work of Christine Pascal and the team at Worcester College.
Positive Achievement in African Caribbean Pupils Project
Two years ago we were successful in obtaining funding from the University of Central England to enable us to look into the achievement of African Caribbean children. We have focused on mathematics and looked into extending problem solving activities with a small group of children who we identified through observations and our school assessment as showing a high mathematical awareness. The first year of the project raised a number of issues for the school, some of which we picked up in the second year of the project. Another member of staff took part in the second year and we worked on activities that could be accessed by all children in the nursery.
The project has raised the schools awareness of children’s ability in mathematics and extended staff skills. It has raised issues for us as a school as well as supporting our belief that all children, including African Caribbean can achieve highly. We have funding to repeat the project this year and will again involve another member of staff and address issues raised by last years project.
The nursery aims to run courses and projects for parents , carers and community members.
The Family Literacy Project has run for several years and has been led by a member of the nursery staff. Parents make stories and books to share with their children as well finding out about how to choose books for their children. Part of this project involves children and parents making a trip to a bookshop to choose book together.
This course run by the WEA lasts for 10 weeks and leads to an accredited qualification. Parents work in classrooms and learn skills to enable them to fulfil the role effectively
In addition the nursery is involved in working with a local health centre offering a parenting skills project
This project, supported by the LEA, involved the nursery in a small piece of action research. We choose to look at the quality of children’s talk in our Book areas. This resulted in a reorganisation of book areas and indeed a replacing of many resources.
This year a member of staff has completed the first part of portage training. She is currently supporting a child in the community with particular needs. We hope that this might eventually lead to a support group for parents being set up in the nursery.