EYFS

“Play is the highest for of research”

- Albert Einstein

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) marks a critical time in a child’s early development.

All early years’ providers must comply with the Government’s Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, which sets out the standards for learning, development and care for children aged 0-5. The Framework identifies seven areas of learning and development, divided into prime and specific areas of learning.

Intent

In the Early Years Department at St Michael’s Primary School, we place great value on the development of children as individuals who are constantly learning, developing resilience and becoming capable, confident and self-assured. We do this by teaching them the skills, knowledge and understanding that they need to prepare them for the challenges of Key Stage 1 and beyond; the World in their time. This is a continual journey and we believe that the EYFS is a distinct and important phase in education and equal priority is given to supporting children’s social and emotional development as it is their learning. We aim to develop children’s enjoyment of learning, their engagement and their motivation. We encourage children to persist and show gritty determination and to ultimately become happy, curious life-long learners. 

Our ambitious and sequenced curriculum helps children to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding their require for success. We aim to make this achievable by embedding the right habits for learning through play and exploration, active learning and creating and thinking critically. 

We prioritise personal, social and emotional development and communication and language and teach children how to make friends and form bonds by listening and speaking and we have high expectations for behaviour by working together and being kind. Our enabling environment and warm, skilful adult interactions support the children as they begin to link learning to their play and exploration. We invest time and energy into helping them set and reflect on their own goals by aiming high and developing a love of phonics, reading, writing and number. This is delivered through a holistic curriculum which maximises opportunities for meaningful cross-curricular links and learning experiences as well as promoting the unique child by offering extended periods of play and sustained thinking, following children’s interests and ideas. We place immense value on developing imagination and creativity and seek to create a sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning through a vibrant continuous indoor and outdoor provision, alongside trips and visits and links to our local community. 

A Summary of our Intentions 

In the Early Years Foundation Stage department at St Michael’s Primary School we aim to: 

• Create a happy, safe, stimulating and caring environment that provides experiences, which appeal to all children. 
• To encourage children to become self-motivated and independent learners to make positive and healthy choices.  
• Promote self-esteem. 
• Promote independence. 
• Encourage children’s curiosity and foster a love of learning. 
•  Build positive relationships with parents, carers and the wider community. 
•  Provide play based, hands on learning experiences, both indoors and outdoors. 
•  Promote good behaviour through high expectations and positive role models. 
•  The importance of learning and development. children develop and learn at different rates (see characteristics of effective teaching and learning) the framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). 

Implementation

To put these intentions into practice, the school:  

• Provides a balanced curriculum which takes children’s different stages of development into account. 
• Promotes equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice.  
• Where pupils require support we look to provide early interventions. 
• Works in partnership with parents. 
• Plans challenging learning experiences, based on individual needs, which are informed by    observation and assessment. 
• Provides a safe and secure learning environment. 

Pupils learn at St Michael’s Primary School EYFS through a balance of play, adults modelling, observing each other and through guided learning and direct teaching. 

The classrooms are organised in such a way that children can explore in a safe environment. Children have access to an enclosed outdoor area, which is used daily as an extension to the indoor learning environment.  

Throughout EYFS, we carefully organise indoor and outdoor environments for high-quality play. Children are provided with plenty of time to invent their own play and to engage in exploration through the variety of experiences carefully planned to capture their imaginations and challenge them in the provision. Sometimes the adults join in sensitively to support and extend children’s learning. Our indoor and outdoor environments are well-planned to encourage learning. We know that language development is central to self-regulation and so we encourage children to use language to guide their actions and plans. We give plenty of opportunities for children to focus on their thinking, to tell us what they are doing and interact with their peers.  

We currently use the revised EYFS and Development Matters documents to support our planning. The planning of the delivery of the curriculum involves all team members and they work together to ensure staff know what is expected. This is seen as vital to ensure the effectiveness of the planning in practice. Planning is carried out on a long-term overview for the academic year, ensuring coverage and breadth of opportunity. The long-term plan feeds into the short term (weekly and daily) basis. The outdoors is seen as an essential part of our teaching and learning space and is included in short- and medium-term plans. 

In Reception we carefully structure our days so that children have rigorous directed teaching in English, Maths and Phonics every day. These sessions are followed by group work when adults guide the children’s learning. This focused group time means the adult can check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning. 

In Nursery we offer a few carefully planned adult led sessions alongside the children’s freedom to engage in high-quality, open-ended play, in which they can start to develop their own understanding of the experiences they have had. This allows them time to develop friendships, understand social cues and build strong foundations for learning throughout the rest of their school journey. Adults will listen during these play times and interact sensitively at times to help extend the play or to offer new ideas that can help the children enhance the learning taking place. 

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. Children follow the rigorous and highly successful Sounds Write programme for teaching phonics. The program is followed faithfully so that they meet good outcomes for reading. Adults work carefully to match children’s phonic ability to one of their home/school reading books, while the other is designed to encourage richer reading and enjoyment of story and non-fiction. 

We follow the White Rose Maths scheme and Number Sense programme in Reception with an emphasis on studying the key skills of number, number patterns, measure and shape so that pupils develop deep understanding through the acquisition of mathematical language. Pupils learn through games and tasks using concrete manipulatives which are then available to be applied to their own learning during exploration. Nursery pupils begin to develop these key skills during daily maths opportunities where they explore sorting, quantities, shape, number and counting awareness. These early mathematical experiences are carefully designed to help pupils remember the content they have been taught and to support them with integrating their new knowledge across the breadth of their experiences and into larger concepts. 

Impact

By the time our children reach the end of the EYFS stage, they should have achieved the 17 Early Learning Goals, which encapsulate the knowledge, skills and understanding they should have at the end of the academic year in which they turn five.