EYFS

At St John’s we understand that every child is unique and we are committed to developing each and every child, embracing learning that is led by the children themselves.

We believe it is important to ignite a passion for learning so that the children are excited, engaged and eager to learn throughout their whole education. We promote positive relationships with parents/carers work and work in close partnership with them to ensure the interests of the children come first. We offer communication mainly through Class Dojo, as well as offering information via our website.

The Early Years Team work very hard to provide an exciting and thriving learning environment both indoors and outdoors. We encourage the children to explore different aspects of learning through a range of continuous provision activities, including mark making and writing, number and shape, role play, physical and sensory. We want the children in our care to flourish and reach the Early Learning Goals by the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage. At the very least, we want them to make good progress from their starting point. During the final term, we prepare and support our children to make a smooth transition into Year One, ensuring that they are ready to take on the new challenges that await them in the following year.

To put these intentions into practice, the school:

• Provides a balanced curriculum which takes children’s different stages of development into account.
• Promotes equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice.
• Works in partnership with parents.
• Plans challenging learning experiences, based on individual needs, which are informed by    observation and assessment.
• Provides a safe and secure learning environment.

Pupils learn at St. John’s EYFS through a balance of play, adults modelling, observing each other and through guided learning and direct teaching.

The classroom is organised in such a way that children can explore in a safe environment. Children have access to an enclosed outdoor area, which is used daily as an extension to the indoor learning environment.

Throughout EYFS, we carefully organise indoor and outdoor environments for high-quality play. Children are provided with plenty of time to invent their own play and to engage in exploration through the variety of experiences carefully planned to capture their imaginations and challenge them in the provision. Sometimes the adults join in sensitively to support and extend children’s learning. Our indoor and outdoor environments are well-planned to encourage learning. We know that language development is central to self-regulation and so we encourage children to use language to guide their actions and plans. We give plenty of opportunities for children to focus on their thinking, to tell us what they are doing and interact with their peers.

We currently use the revised EYFS and Development Matters documents to support out planning. The planning of the delivery of the curriculum involves all team members and they attend planning meetings. This is seen as vital to ensure the effectiveness of the planning in practice. Planning is carried out on a medium term (termly and half-termly) and short term (weekly and daily) basis. The outdoors is seen as an essential part of our teaching and learning space and is included in short- and medium-term plans.

In Reception we carefully structure our days so that children have rigorous directed teaching in English, maths and phonics every day. These sessions are followed by group work when adults guide the children’s learning. This focused group time means the adult can check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning.

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. Children follow the rigorous and highly successful Little Wandle programme for teaching phonics. The program is followed faithfully so that they meet good outcomes for reading. Adults work carefully to match children’s phonic ability to one of their home/school reading books, while the other is designed to encourage richer reading and enjoyment of story and non-fiction.

We follow the White Rose Maths scheme and Mastering Number programme in Reception with an emphasis on studying the key skills of number, number patterns, measure and shape so that pupils develop deep understanding through the acquisition of mathematical language. Pupils learn through games and tasks using concrete manipulatives which are then available to be applied to their own learning during exploration. Nursery pupils begin to develop these key skills during daily maths opportunities where they explore sorting, quantities, shape, number and counting awareness. These early mathematical experiences are carefully designed to help pupils remember the content they have been taught and to support them with integrating their new knowledge across the breadth of their experiences and into larger concepts.

Our curriculum must meet the needs of our children, including our disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND, so we spend time looking at, and evaluating, how children are learning. This is achieved through talking to children, looking at their work, observing their learning experiences and analysing data and progress by year group, class, groups and individuals. Every member of staff uses ongoing observational assessment to identify children’s starting points and plan experiences which ensure progress. We use this information to plan learning experiences and next steps so that knowledge and skills are built cumulatively. During each assessment window, teachers update the progress that children have made and this allows us to assess the impact of teaching and evaluate what we need to do next. Evidence of children’s learning including observations, work samples and photographs which are all kept in ‘floor books’. These are also used by children to reflect on their own progress through pupil voice. Assessment plays an important part in helping the school to recognise children’s progress, understand their needs, plan activities and assess the need for support.

Parents will be kept up-to-date with their child’s progress and development, and the EYFS lead will address any learning and development needs in partnership with parents.

Formative assessments are used to assess the learning and development of children in EYFS. Staff members will observe children to understand their level of achievement, interests and learning styles. This information will then be used to shape learning experiences for each child.

Reasonable adjustments will be made to the assessment process for children with SEND as appropriate.

Assessment procedures are set out in full in the school’s assessment policy.