EYFS

‘Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential.’

Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage 2021

Our curriculum

Intent

At St. Paul’s CE Primary School, we believe in the concept of lifelong learning. We maintain that learning should be rewarding, relevant and enjoyable experience that is rooted in our Christian faith. Through our teaching and curriculum, we equip all children with knowledge, skills and attitude necessary to be confident learners now and for life. Our creative curriculum is coherent, planned, sequenced, progressive, challenging, relevant to our context and meets the requirements of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage 2021. Our curriculum helps all children to aspire, to achieve the best they can in all the learning they explore. Our inclusive curriculum promotes equity and celebrates diversity, it is designed to respect the rights and dignity of every child enabling all children to reach their potential in a communication friendly environment.

The Early Years Foundation Stage framework provides the underpinning principles for all learning and development in our Nursery and Reception classes. We intend for our children to be happy, resilient and confident problem solvers who are keen to learn, develop their ideas and to think creatively. We intend for our children to leave the Early Years with the knowledge and skills needed to successfully continue their learning journey.

Implementation

We enable children to learn holistically through play, exploration and experimentation. Supported by staff, children are encouraged to collaborate, persevere and problem solve together whilst they continually develop personal and social skills. Our curriculum is implemented through a child led approach which means each child receives an individual learning experience, tailored to their needs.  Our highly skilled staff team capitalise on learning moments as they arise during prolonged periods of uninterrupted play. The adult will be always alert to individual children (observation), always thinking about what it tells us about the child’s thinking (assessment), and always ready to respond by using appropriate strategies at the right moment to support children’s well-being and learning (planning for the next moment). Our approach to observation ensures individual progress is carefully monitored whilst ensuring that staff have the time to develop high quality interactions, moving children’s learning on within the moment.  We know from research that where interactions are child led there is much more potential for them to develop and for sustained-shared thinking to take place.  Therefore, we place high value on children’s play and all of our staff have a high-quality insight and knowledge of child development enabling them to enhance and extend children’s learning at the appropriate level allowing next steps to occur spontaneously.  We have taken great care in the development of our learning environment and provide a stimulating environment that sets the climate for learning. We regularly monitor levels of involvement to ensure that all children show strong signs of concentration, persistence and energy in their self-chosen activities.  Our resources have been selected so that they can provide endless possibilities, encouraging our children’s independence and actively promoting creativity and critical thinking skills.  Our children are learning all the time! We provide children with high quality adult led direct teaching, which has been carefully planned to ensure that children make progress throughout Early Years. At key points of the year, including baseline in the autumn, children’s progress is assessed and monitored. Key actions are taken for vulnerable groups to ensure high levels of progress and attainment for all children, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, social economic background or starting points. As a Rights Respecting School we ensure children’s rights are learned, taught, practised, respected, protected and promoted, putting them into practice every day.

Impact

We believe that our approach, underpinned by the EYFS framework and research, perfectly suits the way young children learn and this is evident through the high levels of well-being and involvement our children show. All staff work collaboratively and with a shared vision. They ensure that through a system of highly effective adult-child interactions, child led learning and high-quality adult led direct teaching - our children are learning effectively all the time.

The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum consists of…

UNICEF Rights Respecting School: Children’s Rights… what our children have the right to.

Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning… how children learn.

Prime and Specific Areas of Learning… what we want children to learn. The prime areas are fundamental, work together, and move through to support development in all other areas. The specific areas include essential skills and knowledge. 

Our Curriculum document provides an overview of each area of learning (the statutory educational programmes) and then details what children should know by the end of Nursery and Reception. It also details the statutory Early Learning Goals which is the level of development children should be expected to have attained by the end of the EYFS.

Our curriculum has been further mapped out to document progression and long-term plans for both Nursery and Reception. Our progression and long-term plans show how most of our children will progress across the academic year. In planning and guiding what children learn, we reflect on the different rates at which our children are developing and adjust our practice appropriately. Our progression and long-term plan document details how adults will interact with children and how our environment will meet the needs of all learners. It also includes aspects of our curriculum which will be delivered through high quality adult direct teaching.