EYFS

We believe in the core values of Safe, Mindful and Ready. At St Mary Redcliffe C of E Primary School the overarching aim of the EYFS is to help young children to live within these core values. Learning in the early years is celebrated and promoted as a profoundly important stage of a child’s life when vital emotional, social, physical and intellectual development takes place.

We believe that from birth, children are strong, competent, motivated and confident learners who explore and test their ideas, solve problems and try to make sense of their world. We recognise that learning needs to be first hand, experiential and active; it should promote children’s independence and autonomy, encouraging them to take responsibility for their own learning – initiating and making decisions. Enabling environments offer children security, comfort, engagement and opportunity. Children thrive within environments that support their identify and diverse development needs. Learning needs to take place in the social context and we believe ‘talk’ is central to the learning process. We also understand that learning cannot take place unless children’s emotional needs are met and they feel safe to take risks.

Intent

Though effective learning and teaching opportunities we will ensure that all children are enabled to:

• Feel valued and helped to be happy, confident, lifelong learners with a strong sense of self-worth.  
• Establish strong and trusting relationships between adults and children and be able to work collaboratively
• Establish a culture where safeguarding is strong, there is safety and openness to explore, make mistakes, build resilience and be part of a team.  
• Know themselves as a learner, leading and co constructing learning experiences in a meaningful way to develop mastery
• Have high aspirations, build on their previous best and excel in whatever they choose to do
• Children will hear, acquire and apply high quality vocabulary throughout their school day 
• Children’s needs are identified early to ensure the best start to their education  
• Respect themselves, each other, their communities and environment

Implementation 

We use the following strategies to support the children in developing all of the above:

The Role of the Adult

• To have a firm understanding of child development and an awareness of age appropriate needs, behaviour and learning
• Be attuned to individualised feelings, needs, fascination and lines of enquiry
• Encourage children to communicate in a variety of ways and value first language and cultural heritage
• Develop planning that is personalised, challenging but achievable
• Ensure quality interactions which scaffold and prompt thinking, building on children’s interests, strengths and questions
• Support children to become mastery learners- to ask questions, take and evaluate risks, develop resilience and have ownership for their learning
• To ensure the environment is safe, calm, purposeful, challenging and supportive.
• To provide inspiring learning experiences and provocations in which children can become the leaders
   

The Enabling environment

• We provide children with a rich, stimulating environment both indoors and outdoors to develop children’s intellectual, physical, social and emotional abilities.  
• The daily routine is structured to include time for personal exploration, small and large group sessions and social experiences.
• The routine is always consistent, thus ensuring children feel secure and are able to operate independently. Within the elements of the daily routine varied and enriching experiences are planned to maintain and stimulate children’s attention and learning.
• Planning for the environment is informed by children’s interests, their learning styles and preferred ways of communication
• Resources are easily accessible, plentiful, well maintained and organised and appropriate – with an emphasis on open ended exploration and collaborative learning
   

Assessment and Planning  

We are committed to narrowing the gap, ensuring that no child underachieves, especially those from identified underperforming or underrepresented groups and those living in poverty. We believe that every child has the right to a well-planned and meaningful curriculum that will provide them with the tools needed to succeed throughout their lives, regardless of culture, social class, gender, physical and cognitive capabilities and beliefs. Regular monitoring and evaluation of children’s progress enables us to continually adjust our provision in response to any areas of underachievement that may be identified.

We provide

• A broad curriculum that allows children to acquire knowledge, skills and vocabulary to develop their cultural capital
• Opportunities that are purposefully planned throughout the day and across the curriculum to learn and practise skills that will support them now and in future life e.g. social skills, life skills, trips and visitors
• We enable children to access reading through a systematic synthetic phonics approach, which will give them secure foundations for future learning

Impact

The impact of the EYFS curriculum is reflected in having well rounded, happy and confident children transitioning into Year 1. Our curriculum and its delivery ensure that children, from their own starting points make good progress. Children in our early years, on average, arrive with much lower starting points than national. During their time with us children make rapid progress towards the national expectation for a good level of development at the end of the year. Pupils also make good progress toward their age-related expectations both academically and socially, developing a sense of themselves before transitioning into Year One.

The judgements of our school are moderated with other schools and the EYFS Coordinator is an SLE for Early Years and leads moderating events in other schools. This means judgements are secure and consistent with government guidelines. The EYFS coordinator also takes a lead in Local Authority moderating events which the school also attends.

Children develop their characteristics of learning and are able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with peers and adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing

We believe our high standards are due to our carefully planned environment, enriched play-based curriculum, quality first teaching and the rigour of assessment. Our curriculum is reviewed annually to ensure relevance and to ensure the voices of our pupils, parents, staff and governors are heard.