Early Years (EYFS)
Our Early Years Foundation Stage Lead, Mrs Crump, is responsible for supporting the school, community to nurture every child’s curiosity and enthusiasm, developing both skills and confidence as they take their first steps on their own unique journey of lifelong learning.
What?
In the Early Years classes, our Curriculum focusses initially on the Prime Areas. Our children need to be able to talk confidently in lots of different social situations, work together and be active. The Prime Areas are:
- Communication and language, which ensures we support the listening, attention and understanding skills of our children.
- Physical development (gross and fine motor skills.) Physical development underpins our much of our curriculum. We focus on strengthening our children’s whole bodies to improve listening, concentration, balance, hand eye co-ordination and special awareness. By creating strong body muscles and finger strength, our children develop early reading and writing knowledge and skills.
- Personal, social and emotional development, which gives our children the knowledge and understanding to self-regulate, self-manage and build relationships with others.
The Specific Areas of the curriculum support this and mean that we are building the knowledge of our children in:
- Literacy, ensuring our children know how to comprehend, begin early word reading and writing.
- Mathematics, supporting our children’s knowledge and skills in number and numerical patterns.
- Understanding the World, so that our children begin to understand that there is a past and present, that people have many differences and similarities, the cultures and communities of their friends and the natural world around them.
- Expressive Arts and Design so that they know and practice how to create with materials and have opportunities to be imaginative and expressive.)
How?
Our curriculum is designed around individual our children’s starting points and needs. We take time to find out about children’s previous experiences, progress and attainment from parents, carers, previous childcare settings and early years professionals. We offer each child the opportunities for fun, interactive and imaginative learning and celebrate each child’s strengths and areas of interest. Children make full use of our wonderful indoor and outdoor learning environments which have been created to support our children’s learning and development to explore and discover the world around them. Our deep knowledge of our children is used to create a unique, personalised curriculum focussing on valuing and celebrating children’s language, culture and traditions. We provide engaging, varied and enriching teaching and learning experiences, to excite, engage and motivate children, linked to all curriculum areas
The Nursery is arranged in ‘areas of provision’, which support the principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Each child will learn through a stimulating range of child and adult-initiated play and learning experiences, laying firm foundations for the challenges of their individual futures. Our children are encouraged to explore these areas, developing independence and confidence, taking increasing responsibility for their own learning.
We promote an encouraging ‘have a go’ attitude so children develop confidence, self-esteem and skills that will equip them for future learning, with a positive attitude. We believe young children learn best when they are actively involved, and we provide stimulating surroundings to engage their interest; encouraging talk and language development through stories, rhymes, songs, talk and role-play inside or in the outdoor areas.
In Reception, staff continue the focus on the children learning in an interactive and motivating environment. As they progress through the Early Years Foundation Stage, more emphasis is given to formal learning.
The Early Years Teaching Teams observe the children as they learn through play, identifying learning styles and ‘next steps’ for individual children, which in turn informs the changes and enhancement of the provision. In Reception, the teaching team aim to meet the needs and interests of the children in order for them to achieve to the best of their abilities. Excellent positive relationships and quality interactions between staff, children and parents creates a bond of trust, so we can work together to support children as they develop, learn and grow.
So?
By the end of Early Years, we aim for our children to be happy, kind, confident children who are ready to move onto the next chapter in their lives with a can do attitude. We want our children to flourish in our ever-changing world, and, to meet this need, we develop life skills by encouraging children to make connections across curriculum areas, communicating ideas, thinking independently, analysing situations and taking on challenges. By accessing new experiences, revisiting similar skills in different activities and modelling to others to cement learning we aim for our children to be confident in developing new knowledge and consolidating what has already been acquired. The outcomes for our children in the Reception Baseline are very favourable, with the majority of children attaining the expected outcomes for their age, proving that they are ready to make the transition into Key Stage 1.