Early Years

OUR AIMS

We want our pupils to:

• Respect themselves, respect others, respect all property, and respect their community and the World around them.
• Have a positive attitude that encourages self-belief and confidence
• Achieve high standards in all areas of the curriculum.
• Respond to challenges and seize new experiences whole–heartedly.
• Take an active lead in their own learning and development throughout their life.
• Develop the spirit of enquiry leading to life-long learning.

OUR VISION FOR EYFS

A child's time in EYFS is one of the most important stages in their education. From when a child is born up until the age of 5, it is our intent that their early learning experiences should be happy, active, exciting, fun and secure; and support their development, care and learning needs in order for them to flourish regardless of backgrounds, circumstances or needs.

EYFS CURRICULUM INTENT  

In our stimulating setting we ensure we harness a real passion for learning through a play-based curriculum. We ignite the children’s imagination and curiosity through exciting learning themes and actively develop their confidence and independence.  The children particularly enjoy cooking, singing, exploring, playing and getting messy with paint.

We like you to be as involved as possible, so we send home weekly challenges and half termly targets for you to have fun with your child. Your support as parents will support your child to make rapid progress. You can also see what fun we have been having on our weekly Foundation blog.

We recognise that all children are unique, celebrating and welcoming differences within our school community. Therefore, our curriculum is child centred and flexible, following the interests and fascinations of the children in the current year group. We are passionate about children leading and engrossing themselves in their learning.

We aim to:

• Provide a curriculum that offers children a wide range of opportunities and experiences. We will work on broadening their experiences providing opportunities to try new things and encouraging them to relish a new challenge
• Provide high expectations encouraging them to develop perseverance and self-belief so that they can problem solve and achieve far more than they expected
• Provide a learning environment that helps children achieve their potential and support those who need additional help in order to maximise their chances of achieving the Early Learning Goals
• Provide children opportunities to develop their sense of wellbeing and ability to regulate their feelings so that they feel confident in our community and are equipped with all the tools they need to transition to Year 1 effectively
• Develop the skills and expertise of staff working in EYFS through regular and comprehensive professional development either run by the EYFS Lead or attending courses run by other providers

Our intent is for every child to come home from school happy, having had fun learning!

EYFS CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION

Our curriculum follows the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. This document specifies the requirements for learning and development in the EYFS and provides the prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum. Through our knowledge of each child and formative assessments the EYFS team plan exciting and engaging activities that will move the children’s learning forward. This may involve following a class theme where we take advantage of cross curricular links in order to combine transferable skills and develop a wide-ranging vocabulary which underpins the children’s learning. This may also include following individual children’s interests and making the most of those focused moments where the teaching and learning can be maximised in a one to one way with teacher and child. Each year creates its own unique blend of whole class, guided, adult directed play and child-initiated play activities dependant on the nature and needs of the class of individuals.  We look forward at the start of a year to see where the class will lead us.

Children in EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active and thinking critically and creatively and this takes place both indoors and in our outdoor area. Our outdoor area is open all year round and in all but the most challenging weather conditions. Children make their own decisions about where they learn best and teachers ensure that there are opportunities for all areas of learning both inside and outside.

We aim to implement a curriculum that inspires the children for a love of learning!

EYFS CURRICULUM IMPACT

The impact of the EYFS curriculum is reflected in having well rounded, happy and confident children transitioning into Year 1. Our children are often amazing role models for others in school.

We measure progress and children’s learning across the year through formative and summative assessment which are based on the teacher’s knowledge of the child, their learning journeys, photographs and videos on recorded Evidence Me. We aim to exceed the National and Local Authority data for children achieving Good Level of Development.  Almost all our children make more than the expected steps progress from their starting points.

The judgements of our school are moderated with other schools ensuring judgements are secure and consistent with government guidelines.

The teaching and pedagogy are reviewed and evaluated regularly through regular meetings with Year 1. These have an agenda and actions which are then reviewed in the following meeting. We ensure that the areas we discuss and develop are reflected in changes and developments in our classroom practice.

The Early Years provision features in all areas of the School Development Plan and has a rigorous plan for development each year. This is monitored and evaluated by the EYFS Lead, the Head teacher and designated governor Debbie Smith.

We aim for the impact of our curriculum to produce well rounded, happy and confident children.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES IN EYFS

Where children have a physical disability or have SEND, we aim to provide resources and learning experiences that will support their learning within EYFS. We do this by setting suitable learning challenges, responding to each child’s different needs and providing learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make progress.

Activities should be carefully planned by the class teacher and be differentiated where appropriate for children with SEN and equally the more able and Gifted and Talented children. All resources/materials have been reviewed with equal opportunities in mind, e.g. race, gender, ethnicity. All learning experiences in the EYFS will be available to every child, regardless of race, gender, class or ability. They will listen to, and participate in, a variety of experiences in a positive and constructive role.

INCLUSION

Inclusion is about every child having educational needs, that every child is special and the School is meeting these diverse needs in order to ensure the active participation and progress of all children in their learning.

Inclusive practice in EYFS should enable all children to achieve their best possible standard; whatever their ability, and irrespective of gender, ethnic, social or cultural background, home language or any other aspect that could affect their participation in, or progress in their learning.

We recognise that in all classes, children have differing needs and abilities so we seek to provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability and skills of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways:

• setting tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
• setting tasks of increasing difficulty;
• grouping children by ability and setting different tasks for each group;
• grouping children in mixed ability groups;
• providing resources of different complexity, depending on the ability of skills of the child;
• using classroom assistants to support the work of individuals or groups of children.
• Enabling children to lead their own learning