Joining EYFS
Spaces which support learning
Our EYFS environments are welcoming, calming and promote a home from home feel. In every area, interesting objects and activities invite closer observation and deeper thinking. Our settings allow dynamic learning as children take their ideas from one space to another; sharing their ideas with others in a new area allowing rich possibilities for exploration. The effectiveness of continuous provision is reviewed regularly and carefully selected enhancements are used to further extend and enable learning.
Authentic resources are selected to promote creativity, play and have multiple purposes. As such children have the opportunity to experience a range of textures, size, shape and weights. Supervised play with breakable, real-life items made of glass and ceramic materials is especially valuable because it gives children the chance to learn how to handle items with care and trust their own capabilities.
Opportunities our children benefit from:
- Sports coaching - Passmaster
- Talk For Writing - Pie Corbett
- Forest School sessions - Weekly
- School dogs
- Wrap around care
- Lending Library
- Thematic curriculum that is driven by our children
- Trips and visitors to our setting to make learning real
- Mental health lead
Parent Partnerships
- Parental Workshops including early reading and mathematics
- Tapestry online learning app
- Parent meetings, reports and developmental checks
- Transition meetings and events
- Parents are given the opportunity throughout the year to engage in the wider school community
- Parents of children with SEND or additional needs have regular meetings and dialogue to ensure targets and progress are shared
- Parents are encouraged to support their child’s learning and development at home, through activities and home learning opportunities. This has a significant impact on their child’s learning.
Oral health parent information
5532 A-day - Perfect portions for little tums (1-4 years)
Guidance for parents on infection control
Physical activity for early years guidance
Early Years choking hazards food safety advice
We want to support our parents in helping children to flourish in all aspects of their learning.
EYFS Curriculum
Our EYFS curriculum is designed with our pupils and community in mind. It enables our children to access and enhance their understanding of their home, their village and wider community. It develops their cultural capital and gives them opportunities and choices about the impact they could have as they progress through their school career and beyond.
The EYFS helps prepare children for success as they transition to their next educational phase and links to National Curriculum learning in KS1 and KS2.
The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS) sets out four guiding principles, which shape practice for teaching in Reception.
A Unique Child
Positive Relationships
Enabling Environments
Leading to
Learning and Development
The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework is structured around three Prime and four Specific areas of learning and develop, which are all important and inter-connected.
Within these areas there are 17 Early Learning Goals that children work towards achieving by the end of the year.
The way in which a child engages with other children, adults and their environment links to the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding children is everyone's responsibility.
If you have any concerns regarding the safety or welfare of a child please come to speak, confidentially, to our school Designated Safeguard Lead (Mrs Kate Varley). You can also use the NSPCC to report any concerns.
How to report child abuse without any worries - NSPCC
If a child is in immediate danger, please call the Police on 999 immediately.
Online
Just as our children in EYFS are taught to keep physically safe, children are also taught how to keep safe online.
Parents and Carers - UK Safer Internet Centre
Test Your Internet Filter | SWGfL Test Filtering
Our children in EYFS learn about consent, visibility and understanding privacy.
Early Reading and Phonics
Early Phonics
The teaching of phonics is strongly embedded in Dragonfly Class - through directly taught sessions, focus groups, interventions and regular assessments.
We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme, alongside Development Matters, and follow a prescriptive schedule with the aim of helping our children develop the knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes needed to be ready to learn and succeed in Phonics and Literacy.
Careful monitoring, across EYFS, is undertaken regularly to ensure children access help early where barriers to learning hinder progress.
Early Reading
We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week.
These:
- are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children.
- use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids.
Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:
- decoding
- prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
- comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.
Home reading
The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.
- Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.
- We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.
We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.
As a Pie Corbett Story Telling school children are exposed to a range of different texts and have daily story-telling and sharing moments.
Find out what Talk For Writing is and why we are a Pie Corbett Story Telling school.
Early Maths
Mathematical thinking develops through quality experience and these can be seen throughout the day, daily registration and cooking activities.
Practitioners use story and picture books such as 'The Shopping Basket' by John Burningham, as a tool for engaging our children with mathematical concepts. Board games such as ‘Snakes and Ladders’ can be found in our provision and develop children’s understanding of numbers.
Mathematical vocabulary is modelled by practitioners through play opportunities and direct teaching.
Manipulatives and representations are a powerful tool for supporting our children to engage with mathematical ideas.
Progress
Practitioners work together to ensure that accurate and relevant information regarding children's learning informs each child's learning journey.
We do this through:
- Staff discussions around children and barriers to progress
- Regular parental meetings and workshops
- Written reports
- Pupil progress meetings with SLT
- SENDco monitoring
Children achieve a Good Level of Development if they achieve at least the expected level in the early learning goals in the prime areas of learning (personal, social and emotional development; physical development; and communication and language) and the early learning goals in the specific areas of mathematics and literacy.
Supporting your child with transition
You can make your child’s transition to school easier by being aware of the differences between learning at home and at school and supporting them in coping with these changes.
Here are six ways that you can help:
- Your child will have to follow instructions and stay focused. Prepare him/her for this by giving instructions in a clear voice one at a time. Play the game of ‘what did I say?’ you say something and your child repeats it, they then turn their back and you say something else that they then have to repeat.
- You can help prepare your child for the physical demands of a classroom by making sure he/she is used to sitting still for short periods.
- Classrooms can be noisy! Help your child to realise that sometimes we can do things more effectively by being quiet and still. When all the children in the class are good listeners, the class can learn better. Practise ‘good listening’ with your child; look at the person speaking, keep your hands and feet still, hear what is said and think quietly about it.
- Reassure your child that it is positive to ask questions if they are unclear about an activity.
- Your child will have to respond to instructions, line up and take turns. He/she will have to sit and work closely with other children. Talk to him/her about school routines and be reassuring. We don’t want them to experience any anxiety.
- Your child will be learning to interact with unfamiliar adults he/she has not met befor