Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is divided into seven areas of learning. We aim to provide a personalised curriculum, created around the needs and interests of every child. We carefully observe the children and use this to inform our planning to ensure all activities are motivating and engaging.
Communication and Language
Listening and Attention, Understanding, Speaking
Communication and language are vital parts of each child’s learning and form a key element in our school curriculum. We encourage children to talk about their learning and their play on a daily basis, express their ideas and ask questions with developing confidence.
They have extensive opportunities to develop their language and learn new vocabulary with frequent reading of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems. Children embed the new vocabulary they have learnt by taking part in small world and role play activities both independently and adult led.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Self-Regulation, Managing Self, Building Relationships
This area of learning involves establishing good behaviour and social relationships with other children and adults – being polite, taking turns, sharing, tidying up. It is our main priority when children start at our school that we all value and respect each other and know the school rules and understand why they are there. Children learn how to behave in a way that will enable everyone to benefit from all the learning opportunities which are offered to them in school.
They are encouraged to develop a growth mindset, knowing that they will reach their goals in time if they keeping working hard and have confidence to take on challenges. Whole class and small group discussions focus on understanding our own feelings as well as showing sensitivity towards others’ needs.
Through our Fit4Life curriculum, children learn about healthy choices for their body and how to look after it.
Physical Development
Gross Motor, Fine Motor
Gross motor skills are involved in walking, running, jumping, skipping, throwing, catching, climbing and balancing. These skills develop through weekly PE lessons and the use of large outdoor equipment, developing the children’s control and coordination skills.
Fine motor skills are those needed for writing, drawing, painting, using tools and cutlery, doing up buttons and other fastenings. These develop through a range of activities, which build finger strength and dexterity such as using Play-Doh, threading beads, dressing dolls, using scissors and playing with Lego and other construction toys.
Literacy
Comprehension, Word reading, Writing
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading and develop language comprehension and word reading skills. We follow Floppy’s Phonics for our daily phonics teaching. This is a highly structured systematic synthetic phonic approach which supports our teaching of reading and writing.
Language comprehension is developed through our whole class reading sessions and talking texts. We support children to learn to write in fun and engaging ways. Whether in sand, gloop, on paper or a whiteboard we aim to make writing fun! More information about phonics and how we teach reading and writing at school will be available in the autumn and spring term parent workshop events. For more information about Floppy’s Phonics at Winton, please click here www.wintonprimary.uk/phonics
Mathematics
Number, Numerical Pattern
In all maths activities, we focus on problem solving and use opportunities across the whole curriculum to show the relevance of maths in everyday life. Children learn to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers. They will do this by using a range of practical resources. In additional to daily maths inputs, the children complete Number Sense Maths to support their understanding of number composition and subitising skills.
Children also develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures as well as look for patterns and relationships and spot connections.
Understanding the World
Past and Present, People Cultures and Communities, The Natural World
Through our half termly topics, children learn about a variety of people and communities from around the world, how the past compares to the present day and make observations about the natural world around them, including plants and animals.
They are encouraged to draw on their own experiences, hearing from expert speakers and reading texts as a class. Our outdoor area and courtyard give children opportunities to make observations about the changes in seasons and natural world around them.
Expressive Arts and Design
Creating with Materials, Being Imaginative and Expressive
Children have access to resources and equipment during their child initiated learning which they can experiment with to create their own art, craft and music. There are weekly art challenges to allow children to explore a variety of material, tools and techniques.
Our role play areas provide children with the opportunity to invent, adapt and recount narratives and stories. Nursery rhymes are sung daily and children have allocated music lessons with our specialist music teacher to learn about instruments and how to create music.
Computing
In addition to the seven areas of learning, at Winton we also teach Reception children basic computing skills to ensure they are prepared for the Key Stage 1 curriculum which they will begin in Year 1. This is taught once a week every other half term by our specialist computing teacher and the children learn how to look after equipment, log in and log off a laptop, use a mouse or track pad to navigate and click and double click when necessary.
The children have daily access to equipment in the Reception base to embed these skills.
Outdoor Learning Environment
Children in Reception should have access to an outdoor learning environment throughout the day. We believe that:
- Being outdoors has a positive impact on every child’s sense of well-being and helps all aspects of children’s development
- Being outdoors offers opportunities for doing things in different ways and on different scales than when indoors
- It gives children first-hand contact with weather, seasons and the natural world
- Outdoor environments offer children freedom to explore, use their senses and be physically active and exuberant
Your child will have many opportunities to access a variety of exciting learning experiences each day. We carefully plan learning across the Foundation Stage Curriculum to take into account all of the children’s interests. Outdoor learning is always fully supervised by an adult for health and safety. Our all-weather artificial grass and large covered area allow learning to take place and enables children to be suitably protected from the elements – be it rain or sun!
Characteristics of Effective Learners
As well as the seven areas of learning, another important part of Reception is focussing on developing different ways of learning. Just like adults, children are likely to feel more confident and comfortable with one or two specific ways of learning. During their year in Reception, we encourage children to explore many different ways of learning using the Characteristics of Effective Learning.
We teach children the different characteristics and encourage them to talk about their learning using this language, giving them and us a better understanding of the way that they learn.
In order to make these more accessible for the children to understand and talk about, each characteristic has been linked to an animal characteristic, as shown below. These are displayed in all the classrooms and the base area so that children are constantly reminded to think about how and what they are learning.