EYFS

INTENT

In Early Years at Lyppard Grange Primary School, our aim is:

To create a happy, safe and nurturing environment where children develop their independence and curiosity as learners.
To create a language-rich environment that promotes the development of children’s communication skills.
To provide a curriculum which is exciting, motivates children to love learning, and broadens their understanding of the world.
To plan and deliver a coherently sequenced and ambitious curriculum which enables the child to develop emotionally, socially, physically, creatively and intellectually.

To create an environment where children develop resilience, friendships and positive relationships.
To ensure that learning is accessible for all and that children’s individual progress is valued.
To create a positive atmosphere which promotes high standards and a pride for personal achievements as well as those of others.
To provide a stimulating indoor and outdoor environment where children safely explore risks and challenge their own learning.
To work closely and collaboratively with parents to ensure we value home experiences and develop a true reflection of the whole child.
To effectively prepare children for the next stage of their school life by embedding strong foundations to build upon.

We aspire for all our pupils to become independent, confident and secure individuals with a love of learning. We aim to build on the skills, knowledge and understanding that the children have already by gathering information from assessments on entry. This information is used to develop children holistically and we ensure that all aspects of early childhood development are catered for. At Lyppard Grange Primary School, we promote a language-rich curriculum in our Early Years and know that this is essential to the successful acquisition across the curriculum. The development of communication and language is identified as one of the most important parts of our Early Years’ curriculum. The curriculum is progressive and coherently planned to build upon the children’s current knowledge. We aim to build strong foundations for every child in communication, language, early literacy and numeracy, social-emotional development and self-regulation. We recognise that what children learn in their early years has a profound and lasting impact on their future success and aim to give all children the best possible start so that they can fulfil their potential.

IMPLEMENTATION

Across our EYFS, we follow the Early Years Statutory Framework and Development Matters. These specify the requirements for learning and development in the Early Years and provide prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum.

Prime Areas:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Physical Development
Communication and Language development

Specific Areas:

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design

We deliver our curriculum through a thematic approach, ensuring children develop strong foundations in the prime and specific areas. The children are taught the skills required in the EYFS through half-termly themes with an exciting 'grab' and purposeful activities around this. Within each theme, pupils are encouraged to develop a sense of awe and wonder about the world around them. Our thematic approach and progressive curriculum covers a wide range of topics, while also ensuring each area of learning is coherently planned for and the children develop strong foundational skills. We deliver carefully planned continuous provision, enhanced with purposeful activities, and targeted, quality adult interactions that extend thinking, language, and physical development. High quality communication and language practice, including story times, songs, rhymes, and vocabulary teaching supports the development of the children’s communication skills. A focus on early reading and writing is supported by our consistent, daily approach to phonics and a language-rich environment. We use a combination of child-initiated learning and adult led focus tasks, ensuring children have time to explore, practise and embed new skills. We also incorporate the Characteristics of Effective Learning (COEL) into all teaching and learning experiences to encourage engagement, motivation and critical thinking. Parents are regularly informed about their child’s progress and are provided with the expectations and requirements needed to meet the age-related expectations through a series of workshops across the academic year. Parents also get the opportunity to come and work alongside their children in 'Stay, Play and Learn' sessions.

IMPACT

Through the delivery of a well-planned, engaging and ambitious curriculum we aim that the pupils will leave the Early Years Foundation Stage as independent learners, with the transferable skills and strong foundations needed to prepare them for Year 1 and beyond. This will be measured at the end of Reception against the Early Learning Goals, and a judgement made as to whether pupils have achieved a Good Level of Development and have met Age Related Expectations.

Our pupils will leave at the end of their reception year ready for the next stage in their education and ready for Year 1 by:

being confident, articulate communicators, able to express themselves clearly and listen attentively, with secure communication and language skills
showing strong progress from their individual starting points across the EYFS areas of learning
having secure foundations in early reading, writing, number, physical development and self-regulation
using their phonics knowledge to read accurately with increasing speed and fluency
writing simple phrases and sentences, with most letters correctly formed
understanding and using early mathematical skills
having good personal, physical and social skills
demonstrating positive attitudes to learning through high levels of curiosity, concentration and engagement, and the ability to self-regulate
listening intently and responding positively to adults and each other
being resilient learners who are keen to learn and are proud of their achievements