Curriculum

EYFS Long Term Overview

Please click the link to see our long term overview of all the amazing learning opportunities throughout Nursery and Reception!

The Early Years Foundation Stage

Within the EYFS, there are 7 areas of learning and development.

These are split into the 3 prime areas, which are essential for a child’s healthy development and future learning. They are:

• Communication and Language
• Physical development, and
• Personal, Social and Emotional development

These are then built upon and strengthened by the 4 specific areas, of:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive arts and design

Early Years Intent

Our Early Years curriculum is responsive to the significant diversity, deprivation and low starting points of our pupils with an unwavering commitment to ensuring that every child can and will succeed.

 

We implement the Early Years Framework and offer a curriculum that is enriched by a wealth of vital, first-hand experiences and approaches intended to support our children to build confidence, concentration, curiosity and creativity; to be inquisitive and to have an enthusiasm for life-long learning. Although a consistency of approach, established routines and methods provide security, no one day is the same in Early Years. We adopt a child centred approach and all learning experiences are tailored to meet the individual needs, interests, and abilities of each child, ensuring that all children have opportunities to succeed. We aim to ensure that our children believe in their abilities, are able to manage risk and have high expectations of themselves.

 

Highly skilled leaders and practitioners ensure that the curriculum is appropriately structured and delivered so that all children make strong and sustained progress resulting in the cumulative development of skills and knowledge. As a result, pupils are well prepared for the next stages of education and life –academically, socially and emotionally.

 

We implement the Early Years Framework and aim that each child leaves our Early Years:

• Able to communicate effectively and have the foundations for language and cognition development.
• Having confidence in their own abilities and able to build positive relationships and understand their own and the feelings of others.
• Having developed their core-strength, stability, balance, co-ordination and agility as well as precision and hand- eye coordination linked to early literacy,
• With a love of reading.
• With a deep understanding of number, the relationships between them and the patterns within numbers. (With the building blocks to excel mathematically.)
• Having a range of experiences to increase their knowledge and sense of the world around them.
• With artistic and cultural knowledge that supports their imagination and creativity.

AND

• Empowered to keep themselves safe and well

 

Implementation

We believe that the correct mix of adult directed and child-initiated play ensures the best outcomes for pupils. Warm and positive relationships between staff and children, consistent routines and strong relationships with parents are key. We recognise the crucial role that early year’s education has to play in providing firm foundations upon which the rest of a child’s education.

The EYFS teaching is based on ‘Corner Stones’ which encourages and develops all areas of a child’s learning. It enables children to learn through theme-based activities with an even mix between adult-led high quality first adaptive teaching and child-initiated learning. We also have a book focus each week to promote the love of reading and overcome the language deficit that challenges many of our children.

Language development is a huge focus and is taught progressively throughout each phase. Teachers and the Early Years lead who is also the SENCO, plan which vocabulary links to each topic and what vocabulary will be taught. All children are WELCOMM screened and weekly interventions linked to specific speech and language targets are delivered in groups and to individuals to ensure that gaps in language and misconceptions are sharply addressed.

Early Years is a language rich environment and several other language strategies are used such as ‘Word Aware’, ‘Concept Cat’, ‘Colourful Semantics’ and ‘Early Talk Boost.’ We also use alternative communication for example Makaton, visuals, and aided language display boards to support those pupils who may have additional needs or are new to English. These strategies all ensure that our children make rapid progress in language equipping them with the skills and foundations they need to succeed. We are also part of the Billesley Research School’s Oracy project.

As developing a love of reading is essential within Early Years, we enrich the Cornerstones topics with a wide range of texts. There’s a book focus each week plus a range of books that the children will be exposed to during a topic through story time or with the books being available in their leaning environment.

We understand the value of outdoor learning experiences and provide the children with opportunities to explore, discover, and develop their physical and cognitive skills. Our outdoor area provides learning opportunities not available in the classroom and these are further supported by visits to the Forest Area. Nursey pupils take part in weekly ‘Muddy Monday’ sessions which promote holistic development, fostering resilient, confident, independent, and creative learners.

 

Ongoing informative and summative assessment ensures that next steps are carefully planned for and challenge is built into all aspects of the curriculum. A strong focus on high levels of engagement ensures that our children have a sense ownership over their learning, recognising successes and showing resilience.

We ensure that children receive a well-rounded education and incorporate safeguarding, PSHE Jigsaw and SMSC into the curriculum. Our curriculum forms the foundations of the academies curriculum and each subject is tracked from Nursery to Year Six. The pupils leave Early Years confident and ready for the next stage of their journey.

Impact

The majority of the children in Early Years make good or excelled progress. Where this is not the case the pupils are identified quickly and extra support is given immediately. If required pupils are referred for external support for example; speech and language, OT or CADMUS inclusive services.

Parental Engagement is a strength of our Early Years and it impacts positively on the children’s learning and the confidence that the parents have in knowing how to support their children. Parents are invited in to school regularly and Class Dojo is used to keep parents updated and is a way of the staff sharing their child’s successes. A parent can contact teachers and the Early Years lead through Class Dojo but we follow an open-door policy where parents can speak to the staff at the start and end of each day.

The children in Early Years are assessed throughout the day including during child-initiated time. Pupils have time to embed their learning and are challenged to ensure they reach their full potential. The ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’ underpin the learning and development across all areas. Our pupils are engaged when playing and exploring and they develop the skills needed to create and think critically which is further evident in our pupils love of learning and motivation to learn.

What Do We Teach Your Children?

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum which is organised under four themes and seven areas of learning:

For more information click on these links to the Early Years Foundation Stage Guidance and Outcomes:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-outcomes

Cornerstones

The EYFS teaching is based on ‘Cornerstones’ which encourages and develops all areas of children’s learning. It enables children to learn through theme based activities with an even mix between adult-led and child initiated learning.