Overview
At St Anne’s, our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) staff are passionate about early childhood development and education. Our approach to delivering the statutory EYFS curriculum is to balance formal, teacher led input with opportunities for pupils to extend and embed their learning in an ‘independent learning’ context.
During the teacher led sessions, children work with an adult to complete activities set at an appropriate level for their ability. Our teacher led sessions consist of a variety of tasks including; guided read, write and draw, a maths and English task each week, phonics activities and topic sessions/activities.
During independent learning time, children are encouraged to explore different learning areas both indoors and outdoors. We encourage the children to choose whether to engage in an activity set up by practitioners to deepen and embed learning, or to use their own creativity to make up their own activities. We model the skills needed to use the resources in the classroom effectively, to make sure active learning is taking place through all aspects of the children’s play.
Our early years setting follows the curriculum as outlined in the latest version of The Early Years Foundation Stage framework that applies from September 2021. This specifies the requirement for learning and development in the Early Years and provides specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum.
These areas are:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Communication and Language development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
The prime areas of Physical Development, Communication and Language and Personal, Social and Emotional Development are embedded and developed in every part of school life including in the classroom, during assemblies, in the hall and at break times.
The specific details and breakdown of what we teach and when, is decided according to the children’s abilities, interests and what we think is important for the context of our school. We aim to encompass diversity, British Values and informing our children about aspirational people in all we do in EYFS and throughout school.
All adults working in our EYFS place engaging in purposeful interaction with the children as a priority and are trained to encourage pupils’ development in these areas.
The specific areas of writing, reading and maths are taught through planned teacher input to either the whole class or in groups. Tasks and activities are then planned to be completed either through an adult led small group session or to within continuous provision to develop the skills/knowledge taught. In addition, individual small step targets are planned in with specific children where the practitioner has noticed a need.
Our EYFS is very much a part of the whole school and the children integrate with our older pupils on a daily basis, so that they are well prepared for transition into Key Stage 1.
2022 Information for parents – Reception baseline assessment
EYFS Curriculum: Skills and Knowledge Progression
Click here to go to our Policies page where you will find The Early Years Foundation Stage policy.