Our Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum

School Vision Statement:

Our school is committed to bringing out the best in each other so that every member of the school community can know ‘life in all its fullness’ (John 10:10). Through learning of the teachings of Jesus, we believe that our children can explore and develop their understanding of Core Christian values as markers and guides for their own lives. We aim for the school’s Core Christian values to inform and influence our pupils’ moral compass and allow them to enjoy ‘life in all its fullness’. These values are known as the ‘Sunshine 6’. They are: Forgiveness, Perseverance, Honesty, Compassion, Courage and Respect.

We also uphold Article 29 from the UN Convention of Rights of the Child ‘Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full. It must encourage the child’s respect for human rights, as well as respect for their parents, their own and other cultures and the environment.’

Curriculum Intent:

Our curriculum is intended to equip our learners for the challenges which lie ahead of them in the next stages of their education and in the world beyond. We want to ensure that every child leaves our school with the academic skills needed to succeed and that they demonstrate high quality learning behaviours which will sustain them in their future lives.  The curriculum is rooted in our core Christian values and is designed to support children in becoming individuals who are compassionate and able to communicate and collaborate effectively in the community that surrounds them.  The moral basis of our curriculum, which challenges our learners with big questions, prepares them to become positive role models and open-minded global citizens who are able to take their place in modern society.

Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum Intent:

We intend that our Early Years children leave school every day, having learned that the world is full of wonder; that people are kind; that learning new things is fun and that they are important and they are loved. Their curiosity has been sparked by inspiring provocations and the learning environment has fostered this curiosity, leading to fascinated, engaged and therefore successful learners. Their day has been full of joy and they have experienced “life in all its fullness”. 

We achieve this by focussing on the principles of the EYFS: we welcome the unique child into an enabling environment and build a positive relationship with them in order to foster their learning and development. We focus on laying the foundations for lifelong learning by explicitly teaching the Characteristics of Effective Learning and ensuring that children have as many opportunities to practice and apply these characteristics throughout their day, before reflecting on them at the end of their day’s learning. We recognise that children do not have an equity of early life experience and we aim to directly address this by supporting the most disadvantaged children, as well as focussing, in our curriculum, on those areas which research shows us have the most efficacy in “closing the gap”; namely language development and reading for pleasure.

EYFS Curriculum Implementation:

• Our curriculum is linked to the seasons and major festivals from a variety of cultures, in order to help children to build connections to each other and to their world.
• The long-term curriculum overview maps out the key skills, knowledge and experiences that children should access each half-term, in order to ensure full, cumulative coverage of all Areas of Learning. 
• This long-term curriculum is translated into weekly plans for Literacy or Theme, Maths and Phonics which are all taught via direct whole-class sessions four times a week. R.E., P.S.H.E, Music, Fine Motor Skills, Library Time and Worship are also direct teaching sessions each week.
• Children are grouped for phonics sessions. Once they are confident with the first group of letters and sounds and are beginning to blend words independently, they take home a reading book and diary (the aim being for most children to be at this stage by Christmas). All children take home a library book and ‘reading rockets’ from Autumn 2.

Pedagogy:

• We teach via whole-class Carpet Time, adult-led activities, targeted teaching for groups and individuals and objective-led planning. 
• Adult-led activities and objective-led planning (where adults engage playfully in continuous provision) are rotated between Maths and Literacy each week.
• Children are encouraged to practice the skills they have been taught via daily Challenges which are freely available in continuous provision. They are rewarded for tackling these Challenges by moving up the rainbow.
• Extended time in continuous provision allows opportunities for play-based, child-initiated learning and adults are responsible for supporting and developing this, when appropriate.

Environment:

• In order to support the development of the Characteristics of Effective Learning, the environments are stocked with open-ended, heuristic resources.
• Continuous provision is, at times, enhanced with invitations to play, linked to assessment, theme or children’s interests.

Assessment:

• The Reception Statutory Baseline Assessment is completed as soon as possible after children begin school and is fully completed by the third week. 
• Once this is completed, we baseline the children against all Areas of Learning, including a discrete phonics assessment.
• These assessments allow us to complete a Gap/Strength Analysis in order to set teaching priorities and adapt our environments, establish targeted teaching groups and identify individuals to be supported or challenged in continuous provision.
• This summative assessment process is repeated in February and finally in June when children are assessed against the Early Learning Goals.
• A ‘light-touch’ assessment is used at the end of the Autumn and Spring terms to check that all children are on-track to make at least expected progress.
• An ongoing cycle of observations, formative assessment and planning is shared by all team members in a weekly Phase Meeting.
• One piece of Literacy and one piece of Maths work is collected weekly from Autumn 2, in order to inform teacher judgements. Evidence for other Areas of Learning is collected, when appropriate, via “Evidence Me”.