EYFS

Intent

At Rise Park Primary School and Nursery, we believe that all children deserve an education that allows children’s natural creativity and curiosity to flourish, alongside the purposeful acquisition of skills and knowledge. This gives children the best chance to become well-rounded, happy individuals, ready to succeed in an ever-changing world.

The EYFS curriculum at Rise Park Primary and Nursery, is designed to recognise children’s prior learning both from previous settings and their experiences at home. We know that our children enter the Nursery and Reception classes with varied life experiences and we aim to plan teaching and learning opportunities accordingly to address this. Every child is recognised as a unique individual and we pride ourselves on celebrating and welcoming differences within our school community. We know that young children need positive relationships with adults who are warm, enthusiastic and respect what children bring and build upon. We understand the importance of the teaching and acquisition of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values and provide rich and memorable opportunities to engage learners. We are ambitious for our children. We believe that our first experiences of school should be happy and positive, enabling all to develop a lifelong love of learning.

Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate local traditions, learning new skills to enable the children to take an active role in events throughout the year. Throughout their time in EYFS, the children develop a sense of belonging to our school community, ready to transition to Year 1 and the National Curriculum. They have the confidence and skills to make decisions and self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners.

Aims:
• To work in partnership with parents and carers to encourage independent, happy learners who thrive in school and reach their full potential from their
various starting points.
• To understand and follow children’s interests and provide opportunities throughout our EYFS curriculum to support learning, consolidate and deepen
knowledge and ensure all children meet their next steps.
• To create an exciting and purposeful indoor and outdoor environment which supports learning.
• To prepare children to reach the Early Learning goals at the end of the Foundation Stage and ensure children make at least good progress from their
starting points.
• To lay a solid foundation for future learning and support transition into KS1.

Implementation
Our children arrive at Rise Park Primary and Nursery school at a variety of different starting points and as such, we place a strong emphasis on Personal,
Social and Emotional Development and Communication and Language in the early phases of the EYFS curriculum. Our rich and enabling environment and
warm, effective adult interactions support the children as they begin to link learning to their play and exploration. As the pupils move into Reception, we
invest time and energy into helping pupils set and reflect on their own goals by aiming high and developing a love of reading, writing and number. This is
delivered through a holistic curriculum which maximises opportunities for meaningful cross-curricular links and learning experiences as well as promoting
the unique child by offering extended periods of play and sustained thinking following children’s interests and ideas. We value imagination and creativity
and seek to create a sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning through our vibrant indoor and outdoor provision, alongside trips, visits and one-off
sessions involving parents in their children’s learning.
Pupils learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. The timetable is carefully structured so that children have rigorous directed
teaching in English, maths and phonics everyday with regular circle time sessions to focus on PSED. These sessions are followed by group work and targeted
play where children work with a member of staff to move their learning forward. This focused group time means the teacher can systematically check for
understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of
new learning.
Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them
in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms and importance is given to learning in both areas. The curriculum is
planned in a cross-curricular way to enable all aspects of the children’s development including understanding the world and expressive art and design as
well as to promote sustained thinking and active learning. Children are encouraged to reflect upon and articulate their learning and a strong emphasis is
placed on children practising skills and remembering and building on knowledge.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. Stories, books and rhymes are carefully chosen and support the key themes throughout the year. Books are
woven throughout the areas of provision. We have inviting story corners with high quality texts and add engaging puppets and props to enable children to
retell and create new versions of familiar stories. Small-world play, carefully planned role play areas, a construction place for building, easels and materials
for model making all afford different children different spaces to tell stories and develop language. We place huge importance on the development of
children’s vocabulary and ensure that staff are skilled in assessing early speech and language development and have the expertise to support children in
being able to communicate their thoughts and ideas and explore the meaning of new words. Children follow a rigorous and well structured Pearl Phonics
Programme so that they meet good outcomes for reading with a high percentage of children passing the Year One phonics screening.
We follow the Maths Mastery approach in both nursery and Reception, with an emphasis on studying key skills of number, calculation and shape so that
pupils develop deep understanding and the acquisition of mathematical language. Pupils learn through games and tasks using concrete manipulatives which
are then rehearsed and applied to their own learning during exploration. Nursery pupils begin to develop these key skills during daily, purposeful maths
experiences where they explore sorting, quantities, shape, number and counting awareness through problem solving, daily routines and number rhymes
and stories. These early mathematical experiences are carefully designed to help pupils remember the content they have been taught and to support them
with integrating their new knowledge across the breadth of their experiences and into larger concepts.
Our inclusive approach means that all children learn together but we have a range of additional interventions and support to enhance and scaffold children
who may not be reaching their potential or moving on children who are doing very well. The characteristics of effective learning are viewed as an integral
part of all areas of learning and are reflected in our observations of children.
Regular parent’s meetings, stay and play sessions and workshops ensure that parents are kept up to date with their children’s development and progress
and are fully aware of how they can continue to support their children’s learning outside of school.
Our regular monitoring of teaching and learning includes coaching and feedback from the phase leader so that teachers develop a good subject knowledge
and are effectively supported. We tailor our staff PD to be early years specific where appropriate. We are focused on moderating outcomes across the
phase so that every member of our team feels confident in making accurate judgements about where individual pupils are and their next steps for learning