Early Years Foundation Stage

We believe that a classroom where children feel valued and can grow in confidence, helps them to feel happy, settled and secure. Our child-centred approach aims to support each child to develop holistically and at their own pace. We provide an enabling environment, promoting communication and language skills, whilst ensuring that learning is engaging and enjoyable.

Our school’s core values: Passion, Positivity, Aspiration, Commitment and Tenacity are firmly embedded in our daily routine; as we encourage the children to be risk takers and set ambitious goals that they want to achieve, we support them to believe they can do it and then celebrate their success when they achieve it.

Learning happens through investigation, exploring and immersive, hands-on experiences within a play-based curriculum. To support the children to achieve their own goals and to make amazing progress during their time in EYFS, we ensure that there is a good balance of direct teaching and child-led play in a purposeful high quality environment which supports and extends their learning. Our team is dedicated to bringing out the best in the children. We have high expectations of all children and set challenging but achievable activities and always encourage them to try their best. They are provided with many, varied opportunities to develop and we nurture their confidence so that they can all make positive steps towards achieving their potential.

We value the importance of the outdoor environment, ensuring that children have the opportunity to learn about the world around them, in a natural and safe space. Children are allowed to take managed risks, which both supports their growth and allows them to become critical thinkers, and confident, independent learners.

Every child has their own Learning Journey, which documents their progression and own unique experience throughout their time in EYFS. We value the fantastic partnerships that we have with parents and ensure that  transitions are smooth and that we work together to provide the best possible care and education for all children.

Children enter in a positive, caring and welcoming atmosphere where they feel secure, yet are challenged to achieve their best. We provide a high level of wellbeing and this in turn leads to high levels of child development and the ability to create and think critically. We provide opportunities throughout our EYFS curriculum to support learning, consolidate and deepen knowledge and ensure children meet their next steps. Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate local traditions and learn new skills to enable the children to take an active role in events throughout the year. We work in partnership with parents and carers to encourage independent, happy learners who thrive in school and reach their full potential from their various starting points.

Implementation

Curriculum Aims

Our EYFS curriculum has been designed to reflect the nature of our beautiful learning environment in our school. It is child-centred and that is based upon immersive experiences and topics which engage and stimulate the children.  It aims to teach the children how their environment compares to other places, cultures and nature in other parts of the world. It is therefore unique to Greasbrough Primary School.  We encourage active learning to ensure the children are motivated and interested. We take time to get to know children’s interests and their likes to support learning, resulting in a personalised, flexible curriculum.

“The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.”- EYFS Framework 2023.

In EYFS we believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life to enable them to achieve their full potential. We know that children quickly develop in the early years and that a child’s experiences between birth and 5 years have a major impact on their future life chances. At Greasbrough Primary we ensure all children access high quality teaching and learning to gain knowledge and develop the skills needed to be successful learners in EYFS and beyond. We ensure that all children make good progress and that they gain a secure foundation by planning for the learning and development of each individual child and continually reviewing the impact of this.

Our curriculum has been designed by planning carefully thought out skills and knowledge to meet the needs of the children at Greasbrough Primary School for all of the 7 areas of learning. We used the EYFS framework and Development Matters to give us a base for our learning and then considered other knowledge and skills that we know are important for our children to plan an ambitious and exciting curriculum to ensure our pupils are engaged and enjoy learning and therefore make fantastic progress.

All areas of the EYFS curriculum are followed and planned for to ensure there is a broad, balanced and progressive learning environment and curriculum. 

Prime areas:

• Communication and language
• Personal, social and emotional development
• Physical development

Specific areas:

• Literacy
• Maths
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Art and Design

Personal Social and Emotional Development

We strive to enable children to be safe, happy, confident individuals. We also encourage self-regulation as much as possible and introduce rules and boundaries through modelling good behaviour and reflection time. We want our children to explore concepts, ideas and the world around them. We want them to have access to a curriculum that inspires them and encourages them to strive for excellence. Most of all, we want every child to be a lifelong learner and we seek to encourage them to become reflective so they are able to recognise the value of resilience and determination. These values underpin our whole curriculum and teaching style throughout the EYFS. These values then follow on throughout the school.

Physical Development

Our stunning outdoor environment and expansive grounds enables us to make the most of the outdoors and we encourage children to play outside as much as possible. Our intention is that children learn how to take measured risks and they are given access to our whole EYFS playground and pond area. We encourage children to learn about nature and look after their environment through regular outdoor activities and educational visits which provide vital first hand experiences. There is a well-established and comprehensive PE curriculum, which includes Dance, gymnastics and athletics. Children are taught about the importance of regular exercise and healthy eating, and are encouraged to join in with whole-school sports initiatives such as sports days.

Literacy and Communication and Language

Literacy and communication and language are at the heart of our curriculum. We value these key skills as without them, children would not be able to access other areas of the curriculum.

Phonics is key to teaching children to read quickly during EYFS. In 2’s provision and F1 children begin the year by learning and developing phase 1 phonics skills. When they are secure with phase 1 aspects they then begin to learn graphemes using the Little Wandle scheme. This then continues into F2 where children are taught to recognise more graphemes including digraphs and trigraphs and they are taught to segment and blend these graphemes to read words and then sentences. Children quickly progress through the Little Wandle scheme during their time in EYFS at Greasbrough Primary School. 

As well as phonics, we also know how important it is to expose children to high-quality story books. Each week we focus on a core story in 2’s, FS1 and FS2. The core stories are carefully chosen to ensure that they support the development of language and vocabulary as well as being engaging and exciting stories to promote a love of reading. These stories are used in teaching and read repetitively so that children have memorable knowledge of quality stories. Although these stories are core to our curriculum, children are also immersed in a wider range of books and stories through, daily stories, recommended reads and dress-up day.

At Greasbrough, it is very important to us that children make rapid progress with communication and language and so it is embedded within everything that we do. We have implemented lots of extra opportunities throughout the day for children to practise using the skills that are taught. This includes at snack time, during Talking Tables sessions, during Helicopter story sessions and using the Poetry basket to learn to recite poems.

Children are encouraged to listen and communicate appropriately. We enhance the classroom and outdoor area to reflect the topic learnt. Each topic encompasses enhancements to the learning environment that include role-play areas, small-world play and immersive reading areas to encourage the children to act out scenarios and discuss concepts being learnt. We have a strong focus on oral storytelling and talk for writing. We expose children to high quality texts which reflects the diversity within our school and community. This helps children learn and use new vocabulary introduced through the topics. Children are encouraged to ask questions and contribute to whole-class and group discussion whenever possible. Children who struggle to communicate are targeted in the provision and learning interventions are used when children lack confidence or do not have the age-appropriate skills.  Elkan flowers are used throughout the setting to further develop children’s vocabulary and Drawing Club sessions have a focus on learning core vocabulary.  

Maths

At Greasbrough Primary School we want all children to love maths and be confident mathematicians. Our maths curriculum is centred in having high expectations for every child whilst aiming to ensure that children have the opportunity to develop a secure grounding in number sense giving them the confidence and belief to tackle problems. The teaching of maths is grounded in research and teachers have the opportunity to regularly access high-quality CPD resulting in self-aware, reflective practice where everyone believes in getting better in order to help children understand concepts more deeply.

Children learn and develop mathematical concepts throughout the whole day. Direct teaching sessions are led by the teacher to teach children concepts and then enhancements are added to the environment for children to practise and extend the skills they have learnt. Maths concepts are also taught through daily routines such as Registration, voting for stories, tidy-up time and snack time.

Mathematical reasoning and talk are encouraged across the school. Children are encouraged and supported by adults to reason and problem solve. Stem sentences are used to support mathematical discussions.

We ensure that children are exposed to a good balance of direct teaching and learning through play. In EYFS we use carpet time to deliver direct teaching sessions for all areas of learning. We also use objective-led planning to target certain objectives and to ensure that children are always challenged and that their thinking and knowledge are extended. We use assessments and our knowledge of the children to plan continuous provision and enhancements which will support the children to learn and develop in all 7 areas of learning. We analyse our assessments regularly to identify areas of learning that the children need more support with and then saturate the environment with opportunities for the children to develop these skills both through direct teaching within the environment from an adult and independently through play. Our environment is key to children’s development. Adults model how to use the areas effectively and use sustained shared thinking to extend children’s learning and thinking and to model learning behaviours.

A vital aspect in the development of essential knowledge and skills is the use of continuous provision. Children use and develop taught skills throughout the year on a daily basis. Continuous provision practice and principles begin in EYFS and support children to develop key life skills such as independence, innovation, creativity, enquiry, analysis and problem solving. During the school day, children have an opportunity to work independently, work collaboratively with their friends and with members of staff.

Each topic planned is included in the curriculum for specific reasons and we want to ensure that all children leaving our Foundation Stage are ready to start the KS1 curriculum. All the topics have resources and activities ready to use in the enhanced provision for child initiated learning. Topics are introduced with a good quality storybook or non – fiction text. Using books in this way teaches children that books and reading form the basis of all learning. This ambitious Early Years curriculum aims to teach all children the skills and knowledge in order that they achieve or exceed age related skills in all areas of development. We teach through a range of teaching methods including child-initiated learning, whole class teaching, group teaching, investigations and problem solving together, and independently. We have created a good balance of child initiated and direct teacher led activities to ensure children gain essential knowledge and skills from their teacher. All activities are expertly modelled, and children are given sufficient time, support and resources to repeat and practise them.

How we learn in EYFS

Daily guided activities are planned to cover different areas of the EYFS curriculum and allow children to develop their next steps in learning. Through observation and discussion, areas of need and next steps are identified for all children to ensure good progress is made. Staff in the EYFS make regular observations of the children’s learning to ensure their next steps are met. Bespoke personalised learning and interventions for groups or individuals of children are also implemented and monitored on a daily basis.

To support our wider curriculum, we provide regular opportunities for parents and carers to come into school and work with their child, share their work and celebrate successes. We keep parents informed and we meet regularly with them to ensure children’s transition into school and through the EYFS is happy and allows them to reach their potential with the support needed. This includes transition days, stay and play sessions, parent workshops, reports and parent meetings.

Parents have the opportunity to meet with new teachers and visit their child’s new learning environment. We also support the transition into Key Stage 1 for both child and parents. We prepare children for Year 1 with visits to their new class and meeting the teacher.

Impact

At Greasbrough Primary our Early Years children demonstrate high levels of engagement in activities, developing their speaking and listening skills, enabling them to access more areas of learning and communicate to both adults and children. They will have developed concentration, resilience, teamwork and most importantly become willing and confident to ‘have a go’.

Children will develop a wider sense of the world around them and draw on these experiences during interactions with others and link this to new learning. They will also be able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links, by explaining their ideas and understanding. Children will be confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing.

From their own starting points, we expect all children, even those at risk of disadvantage, to achieve age related developmental milestones and our curriculum expectations, to make excellent progress academically and socially to give them the best foundations to prepare them for lifelong learning. We challenge pupils and push them to exceed their limits.

Assessment in EYFS

EYFS Baseline

What is the EYFS Baseline?

All children starting in F2 participate in the reception baseline assessment (RBA) within the first 6 weeks of starting F2. The purpose of the assessment is to provide the starting point for a new measure that will help parents understand how well schools support their pupils to progress between reception and year 6.

The baseline assessment is a short, interactive and practical assessment of your child’s early literacy, communication, language and mathematics skills when they begin school, using materials that most children of your child’s age will be familiar with. It became statutory for all schools from September 2021.

The baseline assessment is not about judging or labelling the children or putting them under any pressure. Children cannot ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ the assessment. Its main purpose is to create a starting point to measure the progress schools make with their pupils.

EYFS Profile

What is the EYFS profile?

The EYFS profile is sometimes known as the early years profile or EYFSP. It summarises a child’s attainment at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), which is when they finish their F2. In September, the child will then move into key stage 1 as they enter their year 1 class.

The EYFS profile summarises a child’s attainment against the early learning goals. There are seventeen early learning goals (sometimes shortened to ELGs) across all the Areas of Learning. The early learning goals are the goals or targets that children are working to achieve by the end of F2. The goals cover a range of skills that children will have been learning and practising throughout the Early Years Foundation Stage. 

Reception teachers will use their knowledge of what each child knows, understands and can do in order to decide the outcomes presented in the profile. They will also take into account the views of other people, including parents and carers, other members of staff and other agencies, such as speech and language teachers.

For each of the seventeen early learning goals, children will be awarded an outcome.

This will be either:

• ‘Emerging’ – meaning that the child is not yet reaching the expected level
• Expected’ – meaning the child has reached the expected level

These outcomes will be shared with the child’s parents/carers and their year 1 teacher. Remember, there is no need to worry if your child is given an emerging level for one or more of the goals. Children develop at different rates and the main purpose of the profile is to provide support for each child at the correct level as they continue through the school. The main purpose of the EYFS profile is to help create a smooth transition into year 1. The profile results will be shared and discussed with the child’s year 1 teacher to enable them to plan activities to meet the needs of all children in the class and to develop an understanding of each child’s needs.

Please see the EYFS Profile handbook for more information:

EYFS Profile Handbook

Key Documents for Parents

EYFS Statutory Framework

Development Matters – Non-statutory Guidance for the Early Years

Reception Baseline Key Information for Parents

Parent Link to Little Wandle Revised Phonics Scheme

EYFS Policy

EYFS Assessment Policy