EYFS Curriculum Statement
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework sets the standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to 5 years. For the academic years 2020/ 21 we participated in following the EYFS Early Adopter framework which helped to prepare for the statutory implementation of the revised framework in September 2021.
Intent
Our Early Years Curriculum intent is linked closely to our school vision to nurture our children, so they feel safe, happy and valued as part of the Silvertrees family. We provide a rich, well-planned curriculum that is sequential and progressive so knowledge and skills build and are secured. Our Curriculum is ambitious to enable all children to thrive and access the curriculum. Our inclusive approach means that all children learn together enabling them to be ‘The Best That They Can Be!’
Our curriculum has been designed to enable children to succeed through cooperative and collaborative learning values. As such, there is a strong emphasis on the Prime Areas of learning especially Oracy. Oracy is at the foundation of all learning at Silvertrees, it develops children’s thinking and understanding, which in turn promotes self-confidence, resilience and empathy which supports the children’s well-being.
We provide an engaging curriculum that maximises opportunities to develop children’s early reading and maths skills. We also plan for meaningful cross curricular links and learning experiences because we believe that high quality engagement ensures improved outcomes for all children.
At Silvertrees we celebrate that every child is unique, therefore we have designed our curriculum to be flexible allowing us to follow children’s interests, fostering a love of learning and providing extended periods of play and sustained shared thinking.
By the end of the Reception year our intent is to ensure that all children reach their full potential and are equipped with skills and knowledge to have a smooth transition to their next phase of education.
Implementation
In EYFS at Silvertrees, children learn through a balance of child initiated and adult led activities. Adult led sessions enable practitioners to systematically check for understanding, quickly identify and respond to misconceptions and provide real-time verbal feedback and learning boosts which result in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning.
The children learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate understanding through the seven areas of learning-
• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design
At Silvertrees we understand the importance of early reading and maths. In Reception children have daily phonics session using our own systematic, synthetic phonics programme based on ‘Letters and Sounds’. Children are taught to recognise graphemes and apply this knowledge to reading and writing words, captions and sentences. Children are taught to read Tricky Words and Common Exception Words organised into phases. Reading books are sent home to match their attainment and give opportunities to apply what has been taught in phonics. Maths is taught through developing children’s conceptual understanding, using concrete objects, pictorial representations and abstract thinking. Children consolidate these skills by daily teaching of the NCETM Mastery of Number programme.
The timetable is carefully structured to allow for direct teaching in Literacy, Maths and Phonics in Reception and priority is placed on developing the prime areas of learning within our 2s and nursery provision.
High quality, skills based, continuous provision allows for children to engage in ‘exploration’ through a variety of experiences, carefully planned to revisit prior learning, engage and challenge them. Quality interactions from our highly skilled practitioners strengthen children’s learning through appropriate challenge and sustained shared thinking. Through an inclusive approach, our children are given the same opportunities to learn together.
We recognise that language and communication is the golden thread that runs through the implementation of our curriculum. High quality texts are used as a vehicle to promote a love of reading and also to aid our learning journey.
We welcome children from culturally diverse backgrounds and strongly support children who are new to learning English. We have a good parent partnership and are able to share stories in a range of the languages spoken by our children as well as celebrating home languages within our environment. We support children’s development by providing a language rich environment, where conversations, singing and sharing stories, are a part of every day at Silvertrees.
At Silvertrees, we encourage children to ‘be the best you can be’ and our strong early year’s provision enables children to reach their full potential.
Impact
The Early Years Assistant Head Teacher and teaching staff carefully monitor and evaluate the impact of our curriculum intent and implementation.
Our children will have developed a deep knowledge and skills across the whole curriculum.
This can be measured by:
The attainment of the children is assessed against the Early Years Framework at four points during the year: September (baseline), December, April and July.
Data is analysed each term, pupil progress meetings ensure teachers reflect on the strengths and plan for the next steps of their class, groups and individual children.
Our assessment judgements are moderated each term either internally or externally with other schools or as a local authority moderation.