Pursuing Excellence: Early Years Education at Hiba

At Hiba Nursery, we aim to instil in our pupils a sense of wonder. Our unique learning environment provides fertile soil in which our children grow and thrive. They will begin their learning journey and become Inspired, Intellectual, Independent, Individual and Inclusive along the way. Here is how we help them to achieve this goal. 

Our nursery provides a caring and inspiring learning environment which nurtures each child's unique characteristics and developmental needs. The classrooms offer rich, varied and progressive learning resources and exciting opportunities for hands-on learning activities. In addition to our library and spaces for music and indoor sports, our nursery makes use of corridors and other common spaces to create inviting situational learning sites. We celebrate our children’s voices, which can been seen in our displays, vibrant with children's artworks presented on the walls along with lots of other aspects of school life.

At Hiba Nursery we believe outdoor play is central to young children’s learning. Well-planned and well-resourced outdoor play experiences allow for progression in a child’s thinking and understanding. We view indoors and outdoors as one combined and integrated learning environment. At Hiba Academy Shanghai, Charlotte Knight-Benjafield, Head of Early Years, shares the school’s area of focus this academic year: promoting meaningful outdoor learning. “Our focus on excellent outdoor learning manifests at a number of levels. Chief among them are the improvements we have made to our outdoor play environments, so children can explore, challenge themselves and develop their physical skills.” As a result, there has been a complete refurbishment of the nursery’s outdoor area and extensive professional development of staff to enhance outdoor learning experiences for the children.

Each Hiba Nursery class has a Chinese teacher and a teacher who is an English native speaker who work collaboratively to provide our children a world-class bilingual education. Conrad Botha, Head of Early Years and Lower Primary at Hiba Hangzhou says: “Our international educators always look for ways to prompt the children to practise a new English word or phrase or use their Chinese to discuss concepts at a deeper level, by hearing and then applying new vocabulary in play-based situations.”

Setting the foundations for bilingualism in our young pupils is central to our entire Early Years approach. We have qualified and passionate staff teams, thoughtfully designed rhythm of the day and enabling environments in which the children learn through play.  An immersive environment for bilingual learning helps children develop their language skills naturally and in a subtle manner. The steppingstones which enable our children to think, understand others and express themselves confidently in both Chinese and English are set from the very beginning of their time at Hiba Nursery, with the aim of enabling them to grow up to become global citizens with a strong bilingual and bicultural foundation.

We follow best practices in a Chinese and International context as we merge the English Early Years Foundation Stage and the Chinese Curriculum (ages three to six) guidelines, underpinned by the key elements of an effective Bilingual model. The result is an all-encompassing curriculum and Hiba framework for teaching and learning.

Our curriculum design is based on a child-centred approach to extend thinking, communication and language and to practise and embed skills such as literacy, mathematics and scientific enquiry. The project-based learning approach is integral to learning at Hiba Nursery; these are customised to the children’s interests in each class.

Hiba's attention to children's wellbeing can be seen in daily life at the nursery. Teachers maintain a daily study record book about each pupil. Children are screened on a termly basis to assess their wellbeing and involvement. Observation data are used as key development indicators and examined in pupil progress meetings, transition conversations and discussions with parents about their children's overall development.

As Early Years educators, we recognise that every child is a unique and able learner from birth. We aim to afford every child the opportunity of growth and fulfilment in an environment which imbues the Hiba values of Kindness, Courage, Integrity, Respect and Responsibility.