EYFS Curriculum Statement

“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent and independent, with a tremendous spirit of adventure and love of play.”   

Henri Matisse

Intent

At St Peters, we provide all children with an engaging, exciting, knowledge and experience rich curriculum. We embrace the differences in our community and encourage all types of passions and interest to flourish.

We have a diverse community at St Peters, we celebrate the different cultures and beliefs that make up our school family. Everything we do in EYFS links to our children learning basic life skills and acquiring the knowledge to be successful in the wider world. We equip children with the skills to accomplish ambitious careers and inspire them to meet their full potential. Striving beyond and defying limits.

Our curriculum drivers match that of the wider school, Oracy, Metacognition, Ethics and Diversity. These drivers underpin everything that we do over the course of the year. We provide first hand experiences, recognise prior knowledge and develop resilient, creative learners. Through ‘Growth Mindset’ we foster the ability to become resilient and hard working.

In EYFS we:

• Create an environment that is purposeful, well planned and exciting to our young learners.
• Develop the whole child fostering their own characters. Ensuring that our children are prepared to be a valuable part of society by focusing on personal development, health and wellbeing.
• Work in partnership with our families to promote active learning at home and foster independent enthusiastic learners that can share their learning with their family.
• Cater to the changing interests of our children and provide opportunities to explore these through the EYFS curriculum. We provide clear next steps, times to consolidate and deepen knowledge alongside being support in finding their own ways to solve challenges.
• Enjoy sharing real life experiences with the children so they can explore the wider world beyond the classroom in new and unique ways.
• Prepare the young learners to reach their full potential and ensure good progress is made against the Early Learning Goals

Implementation

Our curriculum in EYFS is taught through topics that we alter and changed to meet the children’s needs and interest. It is enhanced with real life resources and experiences alongside trips and visitors. We use high quality texts to drive the different topics and foster a love of reading through all curriculum subjects. While planning is based on the EYFS Statutory Framework (DfE September 2021) and Development Matters (DfE July 2021) to identify next steps for each child to deepen, challenge and extend their learning, planning is also responsive to the children’s needs and interests. Activities are carefully planned to ensure children can demonstrate all areas of learning as well as promoting the different characteristics of effective learning. Planning is informed through ongoing assessments made via observation and group work opportunities.

In EYFS we have high expectations from the minute the children first arrive to the moment they leave. Through consistent routines the children understand the role of the classroom in their lives and feel safe and comfortable. The school behaviour policy is followed from day one and it’s through this consistency and believing all children can achieve that the children in EYFS and beyond, thrive.

Our environment is ‘language rich’ with the use of songs, rhymes, stories, well-spoken adults to model and quality interactions between adults and children also peer to peer. Language related to different areas of learning is displayed through the inside and outside environment, to encourage adults use the language in play and for children to begin to make the connections. As adults in the setting, we promote our love of reading and stories, and we encourage the children to be lovers of reading also. We have a range of texts in our environment: those that are phonetically decodable, those that can promote aspects of sight reading and those that will just nurture a love of the written word.

Mathematical language can also be heard around our setting, through direct teaching, purposeful activities and interactive displays. Our ‘maths rich’ environment inspires children to use maths in their everyday play, helping them to apply concepts in a variety of different explorations and with concise modelling they are shown how they can apply their maths knowledge to real life problems. Counting is present throughout our day through songs, snack time counting fruit, counting children waiting in line and linking numerals to object groups while preparing for lunch.

Adults play a crucial part in the EYFS set up at St Peters, we believe it is vital that adults support children through play in a well-planned environment that allows a love of learning to grow. All adults strive for the same goal, every child being a learner, achieving to the best of their ability. Staff in the setting are committed to uplevelling their skills and taking part in current training. We provide a clear balance between child-initiated activities and adult led direct teaching.

Continuous provision is adapted through the year to adhere to the ever-changing needs and interests of the children. Enhancements are made on a daily basis to develop the differing needs of all children. Our learning environment is divided into different areas in order to support all seven areas of learning. ‘Rainbow Challenges’ give children the opportunity to undertake a wide variety of tasks every week in their own time – revisiting some areas again to challenge themselves with support of adult questioning. From the beginning of the year, we instil in the children that this is their environment and that they need to look after it. Through structured tidy up times the children are able to understand the importance of taking care of the things they have played with and how we can care for our school. Children learn to take responsibility for their actions and the environment.

Parents are welcomed to be a part of the St Peters community from the day they look around at the open mornings. We work hard to create strong partnerships with families to ensure we have a solid relationship created between home and school. Parents are kept informed about the weeks learning through our ‘we are learning. . .’ window displays which reflect some of the tasks and learning headlines from the week. They also received the termly overview which outlines the objectives being planned for in each area of learning. Families are expected to participate in the parents’ evenings that are planned through the year and to engage in written reports that are sent home. When necessary, meetings are set up to discuss individual children’s needs and how the family can be supported.

Impact

Baseline:                                                                                                                                                                            When children begin in Reception, we take the first few weeks to really get to know the children. While also reading previous nursery reports and meeting parents we take children at face value and learn about them in every way that we can in the present. All staff use ongoing assessments, observations and quality interactions to develop a baseline – all adults play their part in understanding the whole child. The baseline indicates to staff areas of strengths and some areas that can be developed, finding this starting point aids planning and ensures that we can pinpoint the best action moving forward.

Baselines that are undertaken include:

• Statutory Reception Baseline: This assessment focuses on ‘Language, Communication and Literacy,’ and ‘Mathematics.’ The purpose of this is to show the progress children make from Reception until the end of KS2.
• Ongoing Observations: Observations are used to inform the weekly planning and provide a opportunity to explore the children’s next steps. This formative assessment provides adults with the scope to discover children interests and needs in a play-based way. Adults use their own knowledge and experiences as well as professional judgement, photographs and physical examples to create a bank of evidence for each child.  Some observations are uploaded using Tapestry and shared with the supporting parents and carers and some examples of work are kept in individual folders and florrbooks.
• NELI (Nutfield Early Language Intervention): NELI is an evidence-based oral language intervention for children who show weakness in their oral language skills and who are therefore at risk of experiencing difficulty with reading. The assessment informs us if the child is at expected for their age or requires intervention from trained NELI practitioners.
• Welcomm: Welcomm assessment and toolkits identify areas of concern in language, communication, and interaction development in order to ensure early targeted intervention. Once a profile has been drawn up for each child, The Big Book of Ideas provides focused teaching and intervention activities to meet individual needs

Assessment:                                                                                                                                                         Phonic assessments are carried out using the ELS Phonics Tracker every half term to identify pupils that are not making expected progress. Our aim is for children to ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’ where possible.  

Assessments are completed three times per year and shared with parents, whereby the Class Teacher updates the progress children have made. In Summer Term 2, the EYFSP (Early Years Foundation Stage Profile) is completed where teachers judge whether the child has met each of the 17 ELG’s. They will be assessed as either ‘emerging’ or ‘expected.’ Whilst there is no judgement to state if a child is exceeding beyond an ELG, teachers, have a duty to provide a narrative for the Year 1 teachers. Impact is also evident through our successful transitions into Year 1. EYFS staff have a good understanding of how ELG’s link to the National Curriculum, and through our planning and delivery across all subjects – both core and foundation - children leave EYFS with the skills, knowledge and confidence to continue their exploration of learning through St Peters.

Tapestry

Tapestry is an online system which allows teachers to create an individual Learning Journey for every child in Year R.  They can add comments, notes, photographs and videos of individual children and then link these to the Early Years Curriculum and the Characteristics of Effective Learning.

A few aspects of Tapestry to look out for and be aware of:

• Your child might not have observations of learning uploaded daily, but please check in a few times a week to see if they have had any observation taken of their learning – you can like and comment on the photos/videos.
• It would be great if you could play an active part in Tapestry through uploading your own observations of your child – this could be a fun day at the weekend, gaining a swimming medal or undertaking some home learning.
• We take time every day to look at Tapestry and the children share their home learning and experiences with the rest of the class it’s a lovely opportunity to build confidence (talking in front of peers) and exploring life at home.
• As well as individual observations, your child might be part of a class or group observation that will show an experience, they have had in the school day with visitors or trips – this is a great talking point so watch out for them, it will get them talking about the school day. Photos are very powerful and will often encourage children to talk more about their day.

Please let me know your child's class teacher if you have any questions about Tapestry or with regards to anything happening in school.