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Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Home Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Grange  Early Years Foundation Stage

Grange Primary School strives to provide quality education for all its children, in a caring and supportive environment. The EYFS plays an important part in this, setting the foundations for children’s learning at the beginning of their school life. At Grange Primary School, we aim to create an engaging learning environment which encourages independence, exploration and challenge.  It is our intent to nurture children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning.

At Grange in the Early Years we:

  • Strive to provide each child with a warm, welcoming environment, making the best use of our classroom spaces, our outdoor space and the staff who work with the children.
  • Work professionally and respectfully with parents and carers, fostering a solid relationship between them, the school and the children.
  • Value all children’s communication and language; we aim to develop good listeners and confident speakers who use an ever-widening vocabulary.
  • Champion reading in all its forms. Our Literacy curriculum is based around telling stories confidently as well as learning and sharing new stories. Our aim is to create curious and interested readers who develop a love of books.
  • Aim to equip the children with the confidence and independence to develop their own ideas, build their resilience and have a willingness to solve problems.
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Children in our Early Years Foundation Stage follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS). This includes statutory and non-statutory documents such as “Development Matters” and “Birth to 5 Matters”. The children receive a broad and balanced curriculum that has been meticulously planned and purposefully sequenced across the seven areas of learning in the EYFS. This enables children to develop knowledge and acquire skills, preparing them to be life-long learners. The “Characteristics of Effective Learning” play a vital part in the Early Years curriculum, highlighting the importance of playing and learning, active learning and critical thinking. We support our children to develop their own ideas by providing them with opportunities to plan their own activities and projects. These learning opportunities feature in our weekly planning alongside non-negotiable aspects of the curriculum, such as phonics.

A key word for us is ‘balance’. We continually strive to provide our children with a broad balance of targeted learning sessions, such as daily phonics and mathematics, combined with ample opportunity for skill development through play and ‘playful’ activities.

We have a mastery approach to teaching and learning.  In Mathematics, we aim for children to deepen their understanding of mathematical concepts and language.  Reception children follow the “White Rose Mathematics” scheme and have daily teacher-led maths sessions, as well as regular small group maths sessions.  In Nursery, children develop their mathematical awareness through songs, rhymes, games and using concrete manipulatives.  Maths opportunities are provided across the learning environment.

We follow the “Little Wandle Letters and Sounds” programme and children have discrete phonics sessions every day.  In Nursery, children focus on Phase 1 phonics (listening and differentiating between sounds and noises, environmental sounds as well as beginning to develop the key skill of blending sounds together).  In Reception, Phase 1 continues however the children are also introduced to Phase 2 and 3 (in the autumn and spring terms) moving on to Phase 4,  in the summer term.  There are targeted interventions for children who are not meeting age-related expectations.  Children are encouraged to read at home every day and, in Reception, are assigned books which match their phonic knowledge.

Children are baseline assessed during their first few weeks at school.  This is done through observations, discussions with parents and where possible, with previous settings. We strive to ensure at least good progress across the curriculum from a variety of starting points. We use the ‘Tiny Tracker’ software system to collate our observations of children’s learning and development. Photographs and staff observations are used to help us to build an individual picture of each child’s time in the Early Years. We look for moments when children apply new skills and knowledge that have been taught at school.

Ongoing observation is used to inform planning and set appropriate developmental targets for each child. Children are assessed at baseline, Autumn 2, Spring 2 and Summer 2 using “Development Matters” to support judgements.  This information is tracked and used to identify progress, target children and areas of need within the curriculum.  In Summer 2, the ‘EYFS Profile’ is completed for Reception children.  In Reception, phonics assessments are carried out throughout the year and are used to identify children who are not making adequate progress.  Appropriate Intervention programmes are delivered for those children.