Early Years Foundation Stage

EYFS Curriculum Statement
 

Intent

We have 5 aims which are intertwined with physical and mental wellbeing, as well as ‘Building Learning Power’.

We want our children to be:

• Ready to learn: Children have a positive, confident attitude to learning.  They are both physically and emotionally ready to learn.
• Resourceful: Children show initiative, ask well thought out questions and are prepared to use a variety of strategies to learn.
• Reflective: Children are curious, able and willing to learn from their mistakes and can describe their progress
• Resilient: Children are prepared to persevere and stay involved in their learning, even when the process is challenging.
• Reciprocal: Children are prepared to help each other and work as a team.

The curriculum in Early Years is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils. It enables them to gain the skills, knowledge and understanding, as they start out on their educational journey, supporting them to progress from their individual starting points and preparing them for the next stage of their education.

Our ethos in Early Years is to support children’s personal, social and emotional development so that they feel safe and secure and are ready to learn.

Through the seven areas of learning we provide topics that excite and engage children, building on their own interests and developing their experiences of the world around them. We recognise that all children come into our setting with varied experiences and all staff work hard to ensure that the learning opportunities provided widen their knowledge and understanding of the world, setting high expectations for all children.

The curriculum celebrates diversity and supports the pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Those children with particular needs, including SEND, are supported appropriately allowing them to be successful.

Implementation

At Sherston, we offer a curriculum which is broad and balanced and which builds on the knowledge, understanding and skills of all children, whatever their starting points. We follow ‘Early Years Development Matters’ using topic themes and enrichment opportunities.

The aim of our curriculum is to develop a thirst and love for learning by:

• Carefully planning sequences of activities that provide meaningful learning experiences, developing each child’s characteristics of learning.
• Providing high quality interactions with adults that demonstrate and impact on the progress of all children.
• Using high quality questioning and interactions to check understanding and address misconceptions.
• Staff acting as role models to the children they teach in order for children to develop their own speaking and listening skills.
• Developing an effective and engaging environment that is set up so that children can access all areas of learning both inside and outside at any one time.
• Providing activity starting points for child initiated activities that enhance children’s learning and impact on progress.
• Allowing children to be successful in their attempts at an activity and using effective feedback to help facilitate next steps in learning.
• Suggesting home learning opportunities with our pic n mix homework, allowing parents to build on their child’s school experiences, at home.

We recognise the changing needs and interests of our pupils and we are responsive to this, regularly developing existing topics.

Phonics is taught three times a day. A recap session, a new sound and tricky words. We assess phonics continually throughout the year and through reading with the children twice a week. We run a phonics intervention every afternoon for targeted children that need support.

The Literacy curriculum is taught using Talk for Writing (T4W) in EYFS. Children develop their literacy skills by the imitation of stories that they learn using actions and story mapping techniques. Children also have the opportunities to show independence in their writing by planning and writing their own stories. Literacy opportunities are also promoted in many of the continuous provision activities available to children during the week.

The Early Years uses core texts as a basis for topic planning and usually start with an exciting hook to engage children in both the topic and the book. We have developed a library system where the children take a book home from the library to read with their parents or carers. We have chosen to do this with a view to promoting reading for pleasure.

The maths curriculum is taught through daily dedicated sessions. These sessions are carefully planned using concrete resources and build on prior learning and real life experiences across the theme and year. This starts with mastering numbers 0-5 and then progresses through to 0-10 and 0-20. We want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real life experiences.

Weekly Welly Walks are run for children in early years; these support a range of skills and develop their social interactions. All seven areas of learning are encompassed within these sessions and allow all children to take risks in an unpredictable environment whilst developing leadership skills and promoting mental health and wellbeing.

Pupils have opportunities to share their learning with their parents and carers through Evidence Me. Regular ‘Stay and Play’ sessions allow parents share in learning activities alongside their children and share the EYFS experience through looking through their books.

Impact

Children demonstrate high levels of engagement in activities, developing their speaking and listening skills, enabling them to access more areas of the learning and communicate to both adults and children. Children develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including literacy, mathematics and physical development using these in different ways.

Children have developed a wider sense of the world around them and can draw on these experiences during interactions with others and link this to new learning.

Children develop their characteristics of learning and are able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing.

From their own starting points, children will make excellent progress academically and socially, developing a sense of themselves so that they are well prepared for Key Stage 1.