Early Years
Intent
At St Wilfrid’s, our Early Years setting puts children’s wellbeing at the heart of its curriculum. When children start school, we ensure that they feel safe, happy and are able to build positive relationships with staff and peers and let their light shine.
Every one of us is unique and we all have different ideas, strengths and personalities, but we are all capable of great things and these are the learning powers that will help us achieve them.
We encourage independent, inquisitive and happy learners. We recognise that children have a thirst for new experiences and knowledge and should be provided with opportunities to engage their inquisitive minds.
Our environment is purposely planned where children are taught to be respectful and that their efforts are valued. It is engaging, stimulating and promotes curiosity. Open ended resources are carefully selected encouraging deep engagement and high levels of concentration.
Our expectations are ambitious for all children in our setting and with carefully planned support children are able to achieve their goals and be proud of themselves. We encourage children to persevere when challenges occur and to do their best.
We ensure learning is accessible for all children including those with SEND. Early identification if used to assess children for SEND and provisions are put into place to support these children
Creating children who are independent, not only in their organisational skills but also in their learning, is a high priority for us. We believe that all children are intrinsically capable of amazing things and we develop this through having high expectations of all children. We pose challenges, build confidence and self-esteem, show children how capable they are and support them to reach their potential. We take time to teach independence skills explicitly and support children to develop into well-rounded, ambitious learners.
Confidence and resilience are key skills for a developing learner. We explicitly teach children to understand the learning process and understand mistakes are valuable learning experiences. Through the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning, we develop children’s active learning skills and help them to understand and respond to feedback. Perseverance is highly valued and praised. We strongly believe that in order to develop resilience, we must teach children to be independent learners who problem-solve for themselves and know to keep trying and how and when to access help.
Implementation
Our curriculum is based around the seven areas of learning and development. These are communication and language, physical development, personal, emotional and social development, literacy, mathematics, understanding the world and expressive arts and design. We also use the Characteristics of Effective Learning as a foundation for our children to build confidence, curiosity and resilience.
The Environment
Our classroom is a place for children to feel safe, develop positive relationships with staff and peers and express their feelings freely. It is an environment that is carefully planned to accommodate the children's changing needs and interests. High quality and open-ended resources are provided for children to use on a daily basis reflecting their curiosity. Every resource has its place and we teach the children use the resources respectfully and tidy away when they are finished.
Our outdoor area is set up to develop children's physical development, problem solving, creativity and teamwork. Reflecting the indoor environment, resources are open ended and allow children to create their own leaning and play. We also encourage the children to take calculated risks.
When planning for the children’s play, known as independent learning, we create hooks for learning to excite and engage the children. Staff will use observations and questioning to move children’s learning forward. Staff will also set up activities as an invitation to learning which have intended outcomes. Staff will work with children to teach and assess knowledge through play.
Planning and Teaching
Staff create a curriculum map for the school year with topics that will be covered together with weekly planning which includes daily phonics, literacy and mathematics. Our timetable is well planned to ensure a balance between adult led and child led activities. We ensure that children have sustained periods of play so that they can become truly immersed in their play and learning.
During the autumn term children are introduced to Rainbow Challenges. These are tasks set out by the teacher for children to access throughout the week encouraging independence.
To support our literacy teaching we strive to create a language rich environment using stories for teaching, daily class storytelling, key words and labels around the environment, and modelling language. We follow the EY2P scheme.
We teach the children to read and write by delivering daily phonics sessions. Children are provided with a weekly decodable reading book that matches the sounds they have been taught. Children are encouraged to read at home daily and are read with three times a week in school. We follow the Little Wandle scheme.
To support our mathematics teaching we follow the NCETM mastering number programme. High quality learning environments and meaningful interactions with adults, support children in developing mathematical thinking and discussion. Children in Reception have daily adult-led maths inputs to develop fluency, revisit key concepts and address misconceptions.
Play!
"Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul." -Froebel
Play is one of the most important aspects of our curriculum. Children gain essential knowledge and skills through play and hands on experiences. Play is joyful, meaningful and engaging which enables children to take ownership of their learning and experiences.
Impact
Through a creative and well-planned curriculum our aim is that children will leave the Early Years with a foundation of skills needed to support their learning journey. These skills include problem solving, resilience, confidence, listening and responding. We also aim to ensure that children feel safe, secure and happy in school.
We measure children’s progress across the year through formative and summative teacher assessments based on the teacher’s knowledge of the child.
The children will be assessed at the end of their Reception year against the statutory Early Learning Goals in the seven areas of learning. This will be communicated to parents in an end of year report.
Working Together
We work closely and collaboratively with parents, ensuring that home achievements and experiences are valid and used to develop a true reflection of the whole child. We also use an app called Evidence Me so that parents can see what their child has been engaging with and learning about in school. We communicate with parents through our weekly news book. We share what the children have learnt in the previous week in school and the children respond with their news from home.
You know your child better than anyone, which is why at St Wilfrid’s we work on developing positive relationships with parents.
