Foundation Stage Planning and the Curriculum

Please click below to see our Foundation Stage policy.

If you would like to know what your child will be taught in Nursery in each term, please view our Nursery Termly Overviews.

If you would like to know what your child will be taught in Reception in each term, please view our Reception Termly Overviews.

EYFS Intent, Implementation and Impact Statement

Intent

Our vision: ‘Embracing diversity, building a brighter future together’.

‘Learning at Boothferry inspires us to discover, explore and use our knowledge, skills and understanding to develop ourselves as citizens of tomorrow’.

At Boothferry Primary School our multi-cultural community places family at its core. We recognise that all children are unique, celebrating and welcoming differences within our school community. Therefore, our curriculum is child centred, following the interests and fascinations of the children in the current year group. This supports learning and development and helps children achieve their next steps.

A primary focus at Boothferry Primary School is to raise pupil’s aspirations, create a sense of personal pride and achievement, provide a purpose and relevance for learning and ultimately help every individual pupil find their strength and interests. In EYFS we provide all pupils with a strong foundation for learning, ensuring they are well prepared for the next stage in their journey. We aim to develop pupil’s cultural capital by offering them new and exciting experiences. Our EYFS provision enables pupils to deepen their understanding of British Values, as well as being internationally-minded, which is defined as having an awareness of others and ourselves.

In our EYFS unit, we use ‘In the Moment Planning’. This means that we capture the interest of a child or children in the present moment. We allow children the opportunity to explore and to play without imposing on them our own ideas and anticipated outcomes, instead supporting children in developing their skillset needed to successfully access the National Curriculum in Year 1.  We have embedded a language of learning that links with the Characteristics of Effective Learning and our school Learning Goals, which permeate through everything we do such as perseverance, enquiry, adaptability, resilience and compassion.

To ensure children make outstanding progress in our EYFS unit, we take into consideration their starting points and needs of our pupils as they begin their learning journey. We ensure that we prepare them for now and for the future in terms of opportunities and experiences.

Our EYFS Unit aims to support children in being:

• Competent and creative learners; who are curious about the world around them.
• Confident children; 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 language rich environment.

The EYFS provision at Boothferry Primary School enables all pupils to live out our school vision in all its fullness; ‘embracing diversity, building a brighter future together’.

Implementation

At Boothferry Primary school we follow the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. This is made up of four overriding principles which our Early Years education is based upon:

• Unique Child – Every child is a unique child who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
• Positive Relationships – Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
• Enabling Environments – Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents/carers.
• Learning and Development – Children develop and learn in different ways. The framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including children with special educational needs and disabilities.

In planning and guiding what children learn, practitioners reflect on children’s interests and the different rates at which children are developing and adjust their practice accordingly. Staff work with children to build strong foundations for lifelong learning, described in the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning.

The Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning are:

• Playing and Exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
• Active Learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements.
• Creating and Thinking Critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

Our curriculum provides a play-based and experiential learning environment, combined with focussed teaching and basic skills, to ensure children make rapid progress before moving into Year 1. The children in both Nursery and Reception are provided with ample opportunities accessible in our indoor and outdoor provision. They engage in self-initiated and free flow activities as well as planned, focussed activities. The learning experiences within our Early Years are linked to the seven Areas of Learning and Development within the EYFS. These areas are split into three Prime Areas and four Specific Areas. The three Prime Areas are those which the children should develop first and are considered most essential for the healthy development and future learning of our children. These include:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development – this involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food.
• Communication and Language – this involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations.
• Physical Development – this involves helping children to develop a positive sense of themselves, and others; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.

As children grow and make progress in the Prime Areas, this will help them to naturally develop skills within the four Specific Areas. These are:

• Literacy – the early teaching of Literacy involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children are given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest.
• Mathematics – the early teaching of Mathematics involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and describing shapes, spaces, and measures.
• Understanding the World – this involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
• Expressive Arts and Design – this involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. We also provide opportunities and encouragement for sharing the pupil’s thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.

Children benefit from meaningful learning across the Areas of Learning and staff plan resourcefully for opportunities for communication, sustained shared thinking and physical challenge to build on existing skills, considering the Characteristics of Effective Learning.

They take part in rich first-hand experiences (inside, outdoors, visitors and school trips) to widen experiences, awe and wonderment. We develop exploratory learning and thinking creatively (including problem solving) across all Areas of Learning. New vocabulary and concepts through reading will excite and engage all learners, which includes staff modelling standard English and when relevant, asking high quality questions in purposeful interactions.

The curriculum will promote and support children’s emotional security and development of their character, enabling children to take risks in a safe and secure environment. Supporting children to be active and to develop physically including giving clear messages to children such as why it is important to eat, drink and exercise as well as to be kind to others.

Phonics

We follow the Ruth Miskin ‘Read, Write, Inc’ Phonics programme to ensure consistency in Phonics teaching across the school.  In Nursery, children focus on developing speaking and listening skills which lays the foundations for the Phase 2 Phonics work which starts in Reception.

In Nursery, children develop their phonological awareness. This is the ability to hear and distinguish sounds, e.g. recognising environmental sounds such as a car engine or a bee buzzing. This helps children prepare to learn how letters and sounds go together in words.

In Reception, children develop their grapheme phoneme correspondence (GPC) and segmenting and blending skills to decode words. Children are assessed every 6 weeks, and grouped accordingly.

*We understand that for some children we will need to adjust our phonics programme. A non-verbal child, for example, may learn actions to support them with identifying sounds. Adjustments will be made based on the individual child’s need.*

Children are encouraged to read at home and are listened to regularly in school. They are given books that match their phonic knowledge in order for them to apply their learning with the aim of becoming successful, confident and fluent readers.

EYFS and Beyond

Our EYFS staff have a good understanding of how the ELG’s feed into the National Curriculum. Our EYFS provision supports children to develop the skills necessary to successfully access the National Curriculum in Year 1. By developing these secure foundations in their skillset, we are confident that children are ‘Year 1 ready’ by the end of EYFS. Colleagues in KS1 and KS2 are also aware of the key ELG’s that link to each Foundation subject and the progression of skills from EYFS to Year 6.  Children are encouraged to employ subject specific language and terminology in Foundation subjects, and such vocabulary will be modelled, by supporting practitioners.

Impact

Baseline

Prior to children starting, staff spend time speaking to the child’s parent/carers and staff from previous settings attended, to gain an understanding of the whole child and their starting point. During the first half term in Nursery or Reception, staff use ongoing assessment, observation and conversations with the child to develop a Baseline Assessment. This identifies each individual’s starting points across the areas of learning so that we can plan provision and experiences to ensure progress. This information is tracked through practitioner knowledge and Focus Child sheets.

From September 2021, a statutory Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) from the Department for Education is to be completed by all schools, administered within the first six weeks of a pupil starting reception. The RBA focuses on Language, Communication and Literacy and Mathematics. The purpose of this is to show the progress children make from Reception until the end of Key Stage 2. This will be completed alongside the staff’s own baseline assessments.

Observation

Ongoing observations are used to inform planning, provision enhancements and to identify children’s next steps. This formative assessment does not involve prolonged periods of time away from the children. Practitioners draw on their knowledge of the child and their own expert professional judgements through discussions with other practitioners, photographs and physical examples such as a child’s drawing/making.

Assessment

Phonic assessments are carried out every six weeks to ensure rapid identification of children’s progress and enables us to group children accordingly. Children are grouped across EYFS and Key Stage 1.

Summative assessments are completed three times per year, using the school’s Progression of Skills document. In Summer Term 2, the EYFSP is completed where teachers judge whether the child has met each of the 17 ELG’s. They will be assessed as either ‘emerging’ (1) or ‘expected’ (2).

Moderation

Staff assessments are moderated in school. Staff work with the EYFS Lead to ensure all practitioners are in agreement with the judgements made on each child’s ability. In addition, we run termly cluster moderation meetings with local Primary schools in Goole to moderate our data and discuss current EYFS practise with colleagues.

Transition

We aim to help each child make a smooth transition into Year 1 at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage. The Reception teachers meet with the Year 1 staff to discuss the children and their individual needs. Information sessions for parents are held in Summer term. EYFS staff have a good understanding of how ELG’s link to the National Curriculum.

The transition from Nursery to Reception is seamless, as the majority of children in our Nursery are allocated a place in our Reception class, which is within the same EYFS Unit. If children are joining us from other settings, steps are put in place to support them with their transition, such as visits to their current settings, after school open events and a parent/carers information evening.