Early Years Foundation Stage
Intent
At Wigmore Primary School and Nursery, we place great value on the development of children as individuals. We want to provide them with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to prepare them for the challenges in Key Stage One and beyond by becoming happy, independent thinkers. Our aim is to create and celebrate a community of learning where there are endless possibilities to discover together through curiosity, creativity and play in order to develop a lifelong love of learning.
We ensure that our environment is a safe and vibrant place to learn with confidence and enjoyment so that children can establish success. Wigmore Primary School and Nursey endeavours to embed high expectations, standards and habits for learning through the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning (playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically). We believe that all our children matter and so we give our children every opportunity to achieve their best.
There are four guiding principles that shape our curriculum at Wigmore Primary School and Nursery:
- Every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
- Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
- Children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
- The importance of learning and development. Children develop and learn at different rates.
At Wigmore Primary School and Nursery, there is a strong emphasis on Communication, Language and Literacy skills. Staff ensure that children develop a rich and varied vocabulary through and enabling environment to support them in expressing their ideas, thoughts and opinions. To support this, we screen all of our children in the EYFS for language development and include them in an Early Literacy Intervention (NELI) if required. In addition to this, there is an emphasis on ensuring that Personal, Social and Emotional Development is prioritised so that children have solid foundations for learning as they enter into Reception and beyond. Children are encouraged to develop a thirst for reading, writing and mathematics which will enable them to succeed across other areas of the curriculum during meaningful periods of play. We want children to develop their imagination and creativity through our provision both indoors and outdoors in conjunction with a rich, wider curriculum.
Planning and progression
Long term planning is reviewed yearly to ensure coverage of the Early Years Foundation Stage, Early Learning Goals and non-statutory Development Matters guidance. In addition to this, there is an extensive list of curriculum enhancements that support EYFS at Wigmore Primary School and Nursery that are entwined into the curriculum.
From the long term plan, each class follows a medium-term plan which highlights the sequence of learning for each area along with key learning objectives.
In addition to this, children are encouraged to follow their own individual interests which are carefully threaded through continuous provision, in the moment to support the unique child.
Implementation
Teaching and learning
Pupils learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. The day is structured so that children have directed teaching in literacy, maths and phonics everyday (in Reception and Nursery) with regular circle time sessions to focus on PSED. These sessions are followed by group work where children work with a member of staff to develop their individual skills. 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 equal importance is given to learning in both areas. The curriculum is planned 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.
At Wigmore Primary School and Nursery, we believe learning is for life and that reading is one of the key strands that leads to success across the curriculum and in the wider world. Our commitment to reading is reflected in the curriculum time allocated to the subject. In all Key Stages there is a reading scheme which matches children to books suitable for their reading ability. In the EYFS and KS1, the phonics curriculum follows 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised' programme. Following this programme ensures our children are confident with their phonic knowledge from a very early age, unlocking the magical world of words while becoming fluent and expressive readers.
We follow a mastery mathematics approach to learning in the EYFS with an emphasis on songs and rhymes in Nursery and in Reception, studying key skills of number, calculation and shape so that pupils develop deep understanding and the acquisition of mathematical language. 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.
Wider learning
At Wigmore Primary School and Nursery, we are very fortunate to be surrounded by a rich and varied environment that allows for outdoor learning, including a Forest School site with log circle and fire pit. We believe that first hand experience is fundamental to the productive and successful learning of children. Children in the EYFS visit the Forest School site each week to take advantage of this experience.
In order to support our EYFS curriculum, school trips and visitors are carefully planned to enhance the children’s learning in school and to build upon experiences.