Curriculum Intent

At St. Peter’s CE School our aim in EYFS is to create a learning environment and build relationships which support, enhance and invite a child’s curiosity, build confidence and independence, as well as integrity, so all children flourish regardless of backgrounds, circumstances or needs. We offer an early year’s curriculum that enables our children to gain an understanding of the community in which they live and the wider world community. We aim to do this by working collaboratively with community organisations, parents and carers to encourage independent, enthusiastic learners who thrive and reach their full potential. As a Christian school our mission statement and values are at the heart of everything we do. We want our children to show their understanding of our Christian vision through their learning in Early Years. Strong, positive and warm relationships between staff and children and consistent routines are key. We recognise the crucial role that early year’s education must play in providing firm foundations upon which a positive attitude to school and a love of learning can be built, which will continue throughout their lives.

To ensure children make progress in St. Peter’s EYFS, it is our intent to take into consideration the needs and starting points of our pupils as they begin their learning journey with us. The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values. We understand that play is an integral part of learning for the early year’s curriculum. We work hard to provide a stimulating environment that provides exciting opportunities, promotes challenge, exploration, adventure and a real love of learning. It is our intent that all children develop physically, verbally, cognitively and emotionally in an environment which values all cultures, communities and people.  We provide a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum which prepares our children for now and for the future in terms of opportunities and experiences. Following children's personal interests and individual needs allows us to plan and provide opportunities throughout our EYFS curriculum to support learning and development and achieve their next steps.

Our EYFS curriculum aims to enable our children to be:

Competent and creative learners; who are curious about the world around them.

Secure and confident; who enjoy coming to school and learning new skills and knowledge, building on their existing learning.

Skillful communicators; who connect with others through language and play, ensuring that they play in a vocabulary rich environment.

It is our intent to ensure that all children will receive the teaching of early reading through systematic, synthetic phonics to learn to read words and simple sentences accurately by the end of Reception.

Implementation

At St. Peter’s CE School, to implement our intent we have developed our own curriculum, which is built upon the progression of skills and knowledge across Nursery and Reception. Our curriculum priorities are to create a rich language environment through the use of songs, nursery rhymes, stories (spine books) that promote a rich vocabulary, and opportunities to learn new words and practise them within our play through the Word Aware programme, as well as providing time for high quality interactions between adults and peers. Staff ensure that interactions are positive and progressive, allowing children to flourish and gather words at pace in order to become confident communicators.

Children are encouraged to become early readers through the enjoyment of books and the systematic teaching of phonics using the SuperSonic Phonics Friends programme. The children learn nursery rhymes and develop their mathematical thinking through direct teaching, being part of small group teaching and exploration.

We want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real life experiences.

We have created our EYFS environment to ensure that the children can be independent in their learning. The continuous provision we provide for the children ensures they are highly engaged, motivated and have the opportunity to engage in learning conversations. The children are supported to learn to work together, manage their feelings and ask questions through skilled adult facilitated play. The resources are easily accessible, carefully planned and support the children to continue to develop new skills, consolidate previous learning and is adapted in order to reflect children's interests and progression. The children have daily opportunities to spend time outdoors in the natural environment in all weathers. They develop through wonderful, exploratory, sensory experiences using large and small apparatus to support the development of their gross and fine motor skills.

Our curriculum is taught through topics, which are enriched with learning environment enhancements, trips and visitors. Topics are supported by high quality key texts. These are carefully chosen from our spine book collection or other key sources to encourage children's speech, language and communication development. All planning, however, is flexible and responsive to children’s needs so plans can be changed and adapted dependent on children’s development needs and interests. The EYFS staff thrive on spontaneous teaching and embrace new learning opportunities as they arise, ensuring time to discuss children's questions or experiences.

As part of the learning and teaching process, the children are assessed initially when they enter Reception through the Reception Baseline assessment (Government task led). At St. Peter’s we value the importance of the assessment process and therefore undertake our own baseline assessment which is undertaken through observations and daily interactions with Reception children. We assess against our own curriculum progression maps to gauge if the children are on track or not. This process continues throughout the school year and extra support for those children who require it, is planned for. These ongoing assessments are used to inform planning and next steps in teaching and learning for all children throughout the year. The Early Learning Goals are assessed at the end of the year and the judgements are made based on the accumulative observations and in-depth knowledge of the children acquired through the ongoing assessments undertaken throughout the year.

Impact

Our early year’s curriculum and its delivery ensures that children make good progress from their own starting points. The learning behaviours we promote through characteristics of learning support children in readiness for year one. During their time with us, children make strong and steady progress to achieve the nationally expected level of development by the end of the year. Children develop their characteristics of learning and can apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with peers and adults, drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing.

We believe our high standards are due to our carefully planned environment, enriched play-based curriculum, quality teaching and the ongoing assessment process.