EYFS CurriCulum

Caldershaw Primary School-Early Years Foundation Stage

Intent

At Caldershaw we aim to provide motivating first-hand experiences whilst encouraging children to build resilience, ambition and a lifelong love of learning. We recognise that all children are unique, celebrating and welcoming differences within our school community. Therefore, our curriculum is child centred following the interests and fascinations of the children in the current year group. We are passionate about children leading and engrossing themselves in their learning. We embed a language of learning based on the characteristics of effective learning.

We aim to:

• Provide a curriculum that offers children a wide range of opportunities. We will broaden their experiences providing opportunities to try new things and encouraging them to relish a new challenge
• Have high expectations encouraging them to develop perseverance and self-belief so that they can problem solve and achieve far more than they expected
• Provide a learning environment that helps children achieve their potential and support those who need additional help in order to maximise their chances of achieving the Early Learning Goals
• Provide children opportunities to develop their sense of wellbeing and ability to regulate their feelings so that they feel confident in our community and are equipped with all the tools they need to transition to Year 1 effectively
• Develop the skills and expertise of staff working in EYFS through regular and comprehensive professional development.

Implementation

Our curriculum follows the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early years Foundation Stage. This document specifies the requirements for learning and development in the EYFS and provides the prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum.

We will:

• Through our knowledge of each child and formative assessments the EYFS team plan exciting and engaging activities that will move the children’s learning forward.
• We take advantage of cross curricular links in order to combine transferable skills and develop a wide-ranging vocabulary which underpins the children’s learning.
• We also follow individual children’s interests where appropriate, and making the most of those focused moments where the teaching and learning can be maximised in a one to one way with teacher and child.
• Provide opportunities to utilise both the indoor and outdoor environment involving all the senses to enhance the children’s learning
• Provide effective and focused intervention for those children who are finding learning challenging and are not on track to meet expectations at the end of the year. This will be provided in an inclusive way and support from parents is also enlisted at an early stage to ensure that the children have every chance to achieve the Early Learning Goals.
• The EYFS team collect evidence of children’s learning through work completed in their learning journey book, observations, photos and videos which are shared with parents using the Seesaw online system. This means that parents can engage with children regularly about their learning and can contribute to the knowledge we have of the child in school.
• Provide children with opportunities that lots of them have not experienced before or that enhance their learning in school. We go on visits to support this or ask visitors to visit us where appropriate. We ensure that all of our visits are learning related and will provide the spark for further immersion in a theme or project.
• By the end of the year we provide opportunities for children to increase their independence in recording their work as appropriate to ensure they are well prepared for the move to Year 1.
• The team in Year R work tirelessly to ensure that children are surrounded by a kind, caring and happy environment which helps them develop the same skills in their journey through school. It is a positive place to be where resilience, perseverance and successes are celebrated and every child feels valued and respected.

Impact

The impact of the EYFS curriculum is reflected in having well rounded, happy and confident children transitioning into Year 1. Our children are often amazing role models for others in school.

We will:

• Measure progress and children’s learning across the year through formative and summative assessment which are based on the teacher’s knowledge of the child, their learning journeys, photographs and videos recorded on Seesaw.
• The judgements of our school are moderated with other schools and internally. This means judgements are secure and consistent with government guidelines.
• The teaching and pedagogy are reviewed and evaluated regularly through weekly team meetings with Nursery.
• We ensure that the areas we discuss and develop are reflected in changes and developments in our classroom practice.