We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage guidance which sets the standards for Learning, Development and Care of children from birth to five. This continues throughout the Reception Year and creates the foundations for future learning in school and beyond. These early experiences can have a significant effect on pupils’ attitudes to learning.
We aim to provide an environment where children can flourish, grow in confidence and are prepared for a happy and successful journey through school. In order to achieve this, we focus on developing social skills, enabling them to work successfully within a group situation, sharing ideas, turn taking, develop empathy and provide an enriched topic/interest base curriculum to introduce new experiences and knowledge in order to teach the child new skills.
The key elements of the statutory foundation stage curriculum are to give the child a broad and balanced range of experiences, activities and opportunities. These are achieved through the seven areas of the Early Years curriculum. The areas are split into prime areas and specific areas. The prime area consists of Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED), Physical Development (PD) and Communication and Language (CL). The Specific areas of the Curriculum are Literacy (L), Mathematics (M), Understanding the World (UTW) and Expressive arts and Design (EAD).
Open ended, flexible and structured activities will provide challenges and help to develop a positive self-image and positive attitudes to learning. Children are encouraged to independently choose activities they participate in to help their development both in the outdoor and the indoor learning environments. Children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) will be educated in accordance with the Code of Practice; the curriculum will be modified wherever possible to cater for their needs and guidance from the school SENCo will be followed. No child will be excluded solely because of their individual needs. The focus will be on removing barriers for children where these already exist and on preventing learning difficulties from developing. Practitioners, with parents should respond quickly to any area of particular difficulty and develop an effective strategy to meet these needs.
Through the curriculum the children will be given opportunities to: observe, explore, experiment, investigate, communicate, describe, explain, question, solve problems, make decisions, create using their imaginations, remember, compare, classify, reason, share and form relationships.
Speaking and listening skills play a key role when children are exploring ideas, songs, stories and role play activities. Listening, understanding and responding are essential in our daily routines throughout all activities. Children can access free choice activities and initiate their own learning throughout the indoor and outdoor environment. As their knowledge and understanding increases through all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Curriculum, children are encouraged to develop their imaginations and become independent learners
Many activities focus on reading, mark making skills to develop into writing, maths and phonic knowledge through the Little Wandle programme. Our first theme at the beginning of the academic year will be ‘All about me’ so we can learn about each other and what is special about ourselves and our peers.
Early Years is very much a part of the whole school and the children take part in (whole) school assemblies, visits to the Church, trips and social events.
Monitoring, assessment, evaluation, observations and record keeping will be ongoing and reviewed regularly to ensure that each child is making progress towards achieving the Early Learning Goals and is ready to enter statutory education and commence the National Curriculum. Evaluation of the children’s work and development will be made in and out of the classroom to assess outcomes and progress; samples of work will be taken; discussions with children will enable staff to find out what they know, understand and can do. The results will be checked against planning and the early learning goals and it will be finalised through observing the child to see if they are on track or not on track. This allows individual children to be identified for additional support. Parents will be informed on a regular basis of the progress of their child through written or oral feedback. All staff within the EYFS class will have access to Tapestry which they will use to observe and assess the children. Observations and assessments will be used to plan and cater for individual needs.