Early Years Foundation Stage

Vision

At Bentley West Primary School, we believe that the Early Years Foundation Stage is crucial in securing solid foundations that children will build upon on their journey through our school. This begins with the development of positive relationships with parents and carers, who we believe play a vital role in their child’s early development. 

Our curriculum builds upon children’s earliest experiences and we encourage parents to share this with us. Our children are unique and we celebrate this by ensuring the curriculum meets their individual needs. Through engaging learning environments and positive relationships with adults in school, our pupils learn to become capable, confident and resilient learners. 

Intent: 

It is our intentions to:

• Provide a sequential curriculum that offers children a wide range of opportunities to build on their prior skills, knowledge and understanding as they move through Early Years and beyond.

• Plan and deliver a carefully considered curriculum that meets the needs of all children. Our curriculum is ambitious and designed to give children, particularly the most disadvantaged, the knowledge, self-belief, and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. It builds on what children know and can do, towards increasing knowledge and skills for their future learning.

• Endeavour to broaden their experiences by providing opportunities to try new things and encouraging them to relish a new challenge.

• Provide high expectations and this is implemented through our School Values. 

• Provide an enabling learning environment that helps children achieve their potential and support those who need additional help in order to maximise their chances of achieving the Early Learning Goals

• Provide opportunities to support children’s well-being so that they transition into year 1 with the acquired skills and knowledge in preparation for the National Curriculum.

• Develop the skills and expertise of staff working in EYFS through regular and comprehensive professional development

• Support the education and care of all children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.

• Provide a stimulating language rich environment where children can speak clearly, express their ideas and be able to understand and interact with others.

• Provide positive relationships between staff and children; consistent routines and strong relationships with parents are key.

• To prepare children to achieve a Good Level of Development (GLD) and the Early Learning Goals at the end of the Foundation Stage and ensure children make at least good progress from their starting points. 

• Place great emphasis on cultural capital that we know our pupils need so that they can gain the knowledge, skills and understanding they require for success. They can only do that if we embed the right habits for learning through the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning – Play and Exploration, Active Learning and Creative and Critical Thinking.

Implementation

Throughout EYFS at Bentley West Primary School, we follow the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. This framework specifies the requirement for learning and development in the Early Years and provides prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum.

The curriculum is taught through topics which are enriched with classroom enhancements, trips and visitors. Topics are supported by quality key texts. These are chosen carefully to encourage children's speech, language and communication development. All planning however, is flexible and responsive to children’s needs so plans can be changed and adapted depending on children’s interests. We ensure that our curriculum meets 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 high-quality interactions from when children arrive in Nursery

A vital aspect in the development of essential knowledge and skills is the use of continuous provision. This means that children are using and developing taught skills throughout the year on a daily basis. Continuous Provision practice and principles begin in EYFS and support children to develop key life skills such as independence, innovation, creativity, enquiry, analysis and problem solving. During the school day, children will have an opportunity to work independently, work collaboratively with their friends and with members of staff. Daily guided activities are also planned to cover different areas of the EYFS curriculum and allow children to develop their next steps in learning. Through observation and discussion, areas of need and next steps are identified for all children to ensure good progress is made.

We understand the importance of parental engagement and believe that our parents have a crucial role to play in their children's education.  We work hard to create strong partnerships between home and school. There will be many opportunities for parents to come into school and work alongside us to give children the best possible start. 

Impact

The impact of our curriculum at Bentley West Primary enables children to develop detailed knowledge and skills across the seven areas of learning in an age appropriate way. 

• As leaders and practitioners, we evaluate the impact of our curriculum by checking what children know and can do. This is when we identify how we have made a difference to children’s learning and development. 

• We have effective self-evaluation of our practice so that we know what we are doing is making a difference and make necessary changes if required.

• You can see the impact of the education we provide by our informal observations and assessments of children, talking to the children and adults and by how our staff are able to describe how well we know our children, their likes and areas where they show less interest.

• We believe that integral to teaching and learning is how practitioners assess what children know, understand and can do, as well as taking account of their interests and dispositions to learn (characteristics of effective learning).

• From the EYFS team knowing the principles of effective observations through high quality interactions, assessment and planning, practitioners use this information to plan children’s next steps in learning and to monitor their progress.

• We strive to ensure that our children’s progress across the EYFS curriculum is good from their varied starting points. We also strive for children to achieve a Good Level of Development and many of the Early Learning Goals at the end of Reception, and to be as close as possible to National Expectations as they transition into year 1.