Early Years Foundation Stage

At St. Mary and St. John RC Primary School we believe in providing a secure, happy foundation for future learning and development for our children. We want our children to be happy, confident and creative life-long learners.

The Reception curriculum allows children to develop interpersonal and social skills, build resilience, growth mindset, and become creative thinkers. We aim to provide a fun, secure, positively challenging and rich educational environment that enables each individual to thrive. Reception and KS1 work closely with one other to ensure continuity and consistency across foundation stage and early years.

Our Mission statement ‘In the light of Jesus, we learn to shine’, is at the heart of everything we do. We place a strong emphasis on the religious, spiritual, social, moral and cultural development of all our pupils, encouraging all to achieve positive human potential. Jesus is at the very centre of everything we do.

We ensure our pupils have a safe and stimulating environment in which to learn and explore. We tailor our environment and curriculum to support children’s individual wants, needs and interests in order to enable them to get the most out of their learning and play experiences. In Reception our aim is to build strong foundations rooted in academic and creative success as well as moral and spiritual development, so that ultimately our pupils can be successful, go on to be active citizens of society and be happy, curious, life-long, ambitious learners with growth mindsets.

Children are given ample opportunities to facilitate their own learning through carefully resourced provision areas and adults support children through high quality interactions that challenge thinking and extend learning, whether this be through adult led learning, or child led play within learning.

Our curriculum is designed around the children’s needs and interests. By giving learning a purpose and application, lots of skills for reading, writing and solving mathematical problems will become meaningful and more desirable through indoor and outdoor continuous provision areas. Through play-based learning and relevant topics we endeavour to provide each child with a range of opportunities which stimulate their creativity and support their development based on their likes and interests. We value the importance of the outdoor environment in order to enable children to develop their thinking, problem solving and collaborative working skills.

We aim to promote a whole school approach and confident transition from EYFS into KS1 through the links made from the Early Years Curriculum into the foundation’s topics. For example, children are given ample opportunities per half term to develop links and skills and knowledge towards the Geography, History, Art and Design Technology subjects.

Reading is a high priority in Reception. We aim to promote a love of reading and competency in early reading skills such as segmenting, blending, sight reading, fluency, reading with expression, early comprehension skills and the ability and love of discussing stories and books.

At St. Mary and St. John RC Primary School we follow the newest Early Years Foundation Stage framework 2021. This is made up of four overriding principles which our early year’s education is based upon:

Unique Child – Every child is 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 and carers.

Learning and Development – Children develop and learn in different ways. The framework covers the education and care of all children in early year’s provision, including children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Areas of learning and development

There are seven areas of learning and development. The areas are: -

PRIME AREAS

Personal, Social and Emotional Development – 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 – 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 – 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 our 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.

Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).

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.

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, and some significant events from the close past.

Expressive Arts and Design – this involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.

This year there is a new focus on early language and extending vocabulary, with more emphasis on how to embed and develop vocabulary skills across all 7 areas, because this improves child development in a broad curriculum.

Phonics (Newly revised Letters and Sounds) Little Wandle

We follow the new and revised Little Wandle Phonics and Reading programme that teaches children to read and write, at the same time as developing their spoken language, vocabulary, grammar and spelling.

Phonics is taught first thing, daily as a whole class. Alongside a number of interventions and ‘catch up’ phonics sessions to support children’s needs in early reading and writing. All phonics sessions are planned for using the Little Wandle scheme and followed consistently by the teaching staff in Reception and throughout KS1. All staff have received up to date training.

Children are given the opportunity to consolidate their phonics skills through continuous provision activities, reading practice sessions and in many other areas of their school curriculum. We provide lots of fun opportunities for children to listen to and contribute to rhymes, stories and poems, exploring words and meaning. Children are read at least two stories daily in Reception class.

NELI- Nuffield Early Language Intervention

NELI is a programme for children in Reception (4-5 years) which has been found to improve children's language and early literacy skills. A member of our EYFS Team (usually our learning support assistants) delivers three small group sessions and two individual sessions to a targeted group of around 3-6 pupils for 20 weeks. Children are thoroughly assessed in early language skills at the beginning of the school year and are given the intervention where necessary. This intervention has shown a fantastic impact in confidence of language, comprehension, and literacy skills, particularly for children with EAL, or children who start reception with speech and language difficulties.

How will we measure the impact of our Early Years Curriculum?

• We want each child to get the best possible start in life and to be ready to thrive in KS1 and then KS2. We do this by ensuring ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning process. Staff observe pupils and these observations are used to plan next steps and future lessons. Baseline assessments are carried out in the early Autumn term to allow us to monitor and track pupils progress right from the start, and to enable as much future learning time as possible.

• From 2021, using Purple Mash EVIDENCE ME each child has a Learning Journey where assessments are recorded and evidenced electronically. Both teaching and support staff are given opportunities on the school timetable to spend time having high quality conversations with children and support learning within our play-based environment. Parents are also invited to termly Parents evenings to discuss pupil progress.

• At the end of EYFS, staff pupils are assessed against the 2021 early learning goals. As a team, we carry out regular internal moderation sessions and ensure that staff attend external meetings and training to

ensure that we feel confident with our judgements and that these judgements are consistent with a range of other settings. Regular EYFS Network Meetings in Wigan support teachers and practitioners in our setting to have support from other EYFS settings, and to share good practice, and to take part in awareness of regular and important updates. Action Plans are also shared annually with Governors.

• The EYFS staff are committed to raising standards by attending relevant CPD and ensuring each child at St. Mary and St. John RC Primary School has the best start on their school learning journey.

We aim to provide our pupils with the building blocks for learning, behaving, and engaging with all aspects of school life and life in the world they live in, preparing them for the transition to Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 and their continued learning journey into High school and beyond.

As soon as the children start in Reception, they are encouraged to engage with all aspects of school life. Year 6 pupils link with Reception to create a well-established buddy system which quickly helps the pupils settle into school. These same Reception pupils then provide the link when they move into Year 6 to support the next generation of pupils.

Our mission statement emphasises our on-going vision for our pupils from Reception to Year 6:

‘In the Light of Jesus, we learn to shine.’