Early Years Foundation Stage

The curriculum in Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils. It facilitates 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 Reception 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 provide learning opportunities 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 school with varied experiences. Our staff work hard to ensure that the learning opportunities provided widen their knowledge and understanding of the world, setting ambitious expectations for all children.

Those children with particular needs, including SEND, are supported appropriately allowing them to be successful in every way possible.

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.

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. 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.
• Carefully assessing, through observations, which are recorded on Tapestry and shared with parents. These are used to inform the next steps of learning and meet individual needs.
• 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.

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