Quality Learning Environments

Please scroll down to view a list of both national documents and links as well as local documents and examples that can provide support when developing high quality learning environments for young children.

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Highland Council have produced A Guide to Support Core Provision in ELC Settings – August 2019

This guide includes top tips and reflective questions that can help you evaluate and plan future improvements to create a high quality learning environment.

If you want to look outwards and see what others have done when developing their learning environments click here. 

NIH

The National Information Hub has information on how to reflect and develop your learning environments for example:

Inspiring environments for high-quality learning

This example of practice describes how early learning and childcare staff across Clackmannanshire and Stirling improved the environment of their setting. Using Building the Ambition as a starting point, staff critically reflected on how children’s spaces could be improved and what materials and resources could be offered to children in exciting ways.
This learning resource includes case studies from two different settings in different areas of Scotland.
The Seedling Room at Hailesland Early Years Centre and Wellgreen Nursery.
Each setting evaluated their learning environments to better meet the needs of the children. In the Seedling Room, practitioners change the space and materials, and at Wellgreen, the setting moved doors and partitions to create a free-flow area for two to five year olds.

Developing interactions, spaces and experiences through block play:

Education Scotland have produced a series of 4 videos that can be used by individuals and groups of practitioners to support professional learning to develop understanding and support practice in relation to block play. Click on the images below to watch.

                                   

                                   

Our Creative Journey shares good and innovative practice examples form all over Scotland. “Creativity is a key ingredient for children to learn how to follow their curiosity, solve problems and make sense of the world… Just taking part in expressive arts can be transformative – the end product is not the goal.”

Space to Grow is a design document aimed at supporting “early learning and childcare providers, and the out of school sector, develop new and innovative environments for children to grow and develop in.”