The core of our EYFS curriculum is the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, which is supported by Essential Letters and Sounds, Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (2022), Development Matters, Birth to 5 Matters and the Seven Features of Effective Practice.The curriculum has been coherently sequenced in a logical progression to ensure that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before. This enables our pupils to know more and remember more ready for future learning. End points are identified across all seven areas of learning in the EYFS progression document.We cover the seven areas of learning to ensure that pupils experience a curriculum that is broad and ambitious that develops their vocabulary and prepares them for their next stage of learning. Our school’s approach to teaching early reading and synthetic phonics is systematic and ensures that pupils learn to read words and simple sentences accurately by the end of Reception.Nursery and Reception have curriculum maps that outline the seven key areas of learning on a two-year rolling programme. This ensures that adequate amount of time and coverage is allocated to each key area.
Medium Term planning supports teachers to plan a board, balanced and meaningful curriculum that enables pupils to build on previous learning and have opportunities to master new concepts whilst providing the flexibility for pupils to follow their own interests and ideas.
Pupils learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. The timetable is carefully structured so that children have rigorous directed teaching in English, maths and phonics everyday with regular circle time sessions to focus on PSED. These sessions are followed by group work where children work with a member of staff to develop their ambitious individual targets. This focused group time means the teacher can systematically check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning.
Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms and equal importance is given to learning in both areas. The curriculum offer and environment is crafted to allow children opportunity to revisit and embed knowledge, to develop an automaticity and fluency of key knowledge and skills. Cross-curricular designing further comments these opportunities for practice and application.
The pupils will learn new skills, acquire new knowledge, and demonstrate understanding through the seven areas of the EYFS curriculum: