Early Years

Intent, Implementation, Impact

Intent

At Rolls Crescent Primary school, we believe that all children have the right to an engaging education which ignites excitement and curiosity and inspires them to want to learn, alongside learning purposeful knowledge and skills. We want to provide children with memorable experiences and key life skills during their time with us in the EYFS. We want children to respect and care for others and to develop self-regulation and social skills. By providing them with an education that does all of this we believe children will have the best chance to become well-rounded, confident and happy individuals ready to succeed in an everchanging world.

The curriculum in Early Years is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. 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 Early Years is to support children’s personal, social and emotional development and to create a safe environment of trust and mutual respect.

Our environments have been carefully planned to ensure children can access resources independently, lead their own learning and feel confident, relaxed and happy in cosy and inviting spaces.

Through the seven areas of learning we provide topis 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 ambitious expectations of all children.

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

Implementation

We offer a curriculum that is broad and balanced and which builds on the knowledge, understanding and skills of all children, whatever their starting points. We follow the Early Years curriculum using topic themes as a starting point. Each topic begins with a ‘Big Question’ to help hook the children in and inspire them to want to learn.

The aim of our curriculum is to develop curiosity, a love for learning and memorable experiences by:

- Providing child-initiated activities in line with children’s starting points which enhance their learning and impacts on progress.

- Developing an effective and engaging environment that is rich in language whilst taking into consideration the need for the children to be able to access all areas of learning, both inside and outside at any one time.

- Providing high quality interactions with adults that demonstrate and impact on the progress of all children.

- Ensuring that ‘The Unique Child’ is at the forefront of adult’s interactions and adopting a nurturing approach for those pupils who might need some reassurance to enable them to succeed.

- 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, some of which are recorded on Insights and shared with parents. These are used to inform the next steps of learning and meet individual needs.

- Allowing children to be successful in their attempts at an activity and using effective verbal feedback to help facilitate next steps in learning but providing enough challenge to develop resilience.

- Suggesting home learning opportunities with information about what has been taught, 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.

Children develop their literacy skills by the imitation of stories that they learn using actions and story mapping techniques. They then move onto innovation of these well-known stories by including their own ideas. Literacy and Phonics opportunities are also promoted in many of the continuous provision activities available to children during the week. The Early Years uses high quality texts as a basis for topic planning and usually start with an exciting hook to engage children in both the topic and the book.

Phonics is taught daily using an accredited Phonics scheme ‘Little Wandle’ based on letters and sounds. It is largely taught in whole class groups, with some children who are brand new to English or have significant SEND accessing smaller phonics groups at a more appropriate pace for them.

The maths curriculum is taught through daily dedicated sessions following the ‘NCTM Mastering number’ scheme in Reception and the ‘Story time maths’ scheme in Nursery. We want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learned to real life experiences.

Extra-curricular opportunities include:

- Visitors to enhance children’s learning

- Visits in the local community

- Educational visits into the wider area.

Parents/Carers are informed of the children’s learning using Insight reports where significant observations are recorded. Class dojo or seesaw is also used to update parents about weekly learning opportunities and key messages. Parents are invited to regular stay and play sessions and workshops and receive information and videos to watch at home about their children’s learning in addition to weekly home learning.

Impact

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

Children will 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 will develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including Literacy, Mathematics and Physical development using these in different ways.

Children will 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 will have developed their Characteristics of Learning and be able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding.

Children will be more confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing.

Children will be successful learners and fully prepared for the next stage of their education as they transition from the Foundation Stage to Year One.

We will also aim to help children to make sense of the world around them, to develop tolerance, compassion and understanding of their rights and the rights of others in an ever-evolving world with the support of the Think Equal programme.

Children at the end of Foundation Stage will have developed essential knowledge and skills required for everyday life and lifelong learning.