Early Years Foundation Stage at Hillmorton Primary School
Intent
Here at Hillmorton, we recognise the fundamental role a child’s early experiences plays in shaping the person and learner they become. As a cohesive team, we share the core belief that creating life-long learners who are happy, curious, creative, confident and engaged with the opportunity to develop characteristics of effective learning. We provide pupils with a safe and stimulating indoor and outdoor environment that will enable them to thrive and become independent and resilient individuals. Our EYFS curriculum is designed to underpin strong foundations across the prime and specific areas of learning which support a progression in knowledge and skills required for Key Stage 1 and beyond.
As part of a rich and broad curriculum, the children receive high quality directed learning in the form of Maths Mastery in Reception and Master the Curriculum in Pre-school to inform our mathematics curriculum. To support our literacy and language and communication objectives we facilitate Power of Reading sessions three times a week and daily Little Wandle Phonics sessions, in Reception there are also guided reading sessions three times a week. These initiatives have been carefully selected by Hillmorton Primary as their values of promoting a deep understanding of concepts, placing a high emphasis on vocabulary development, whilst promoting curiosity and engagement within these areas of learning which align with our own school ethos.
By investing in these initiatives as a school, this ensures our children are following a carefully scaffolded curriculum in mathematics, phonics and reading informed by current educational research which builds upon prior learning carefully as our children progress into KS1 and into KS2.
Our school’s secrets of success are regularly referred to during the school day. This supports the children in recognising achievements and next steps informing valuable discussions around their personal, social and emotional development and to also support us feeling a sense of school community.
We recognise as part of the DFE’s Statutory guidance, play is an integral component of the Early Years provision. Play enables children to consolidate key learning, for them to follow their own interests and collaborate positively with their peers and adults, supporting them to build positive relationships.
There are opportunities throughout the day for children to engage in high quality play indoors and outdoors. We have worked closely with Early Excellence to create impressive indoor environments and an ample sized shared outdoor environment.
As staff we also recognise the importance of the role of the adult to facilitate play effectively following the children’s interests. Within Early Years we strongly believe the environment, the adults and children work as a triad in order to facilitate high quality and purposeful learning.
We believe the effective characteristics of learning in the Early Years support children in becoming life-long learners. We regularly review the opportunities provided for our children in our provision in order to meet individual needs.
Implementation
Please refer to our Long term and half termly planning documents below which give an insight into how we meet the EYFS curriculum expectations across the wider curriculum across the academic year.
Our EYFS Reading Spine:
Each half term we focus on one Power of Reading text which includes sessions planned by literary specialists that compliment different areas of the EYFS curriculum. As skilled practitioners we adapt sessions to meet the needs and interests of the children in our provision. In Pre-school we use the platform Evidence me to document and share our learning with parents and carers. In Reception we evidence the children’s engagement with these texts in our class floor books and adult led group tasks in our individual workbooks.
In addition to our focus Power of Reading text, we recognise the importance of sharing high quality texts in our provision (recommended by Power of Reading and/or Early Excellence) so we carefully consider the texts we have accessible in our different areas, including our book corner and the texts we read aloud for pleasure and enjoyment each day. We endeavour to give our children a broad and rich reading diet of different genres including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
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 measure progress and children’s individual next steps for learning across the year through formative and summative assessment, based on the teacher’s knowledge of the child.
We aim to exceed the National and Local Authority data for children achieving Good Level of Development. Almost all of our children make more than the expected steps progress from their starting points.