The Early Years Foundation Stage
Intent
At Burghill Community Academy, we provide a warm and welcoming setting for children and their families. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum ensures every child feels included, secure and valued. It builds on what children already know and can do, celebrating all areas of achievement. Children’s interests are valued and provision is made for a balance of child-initiated and adult led activities.
Our curriculum is designed to recognise children’s prior learning, both from previous settings and their experiences at home. We work in partnership with parents and carers to provide the best possible start, ensuring each individual reaches their full potential from their various starting points.
We aim to provide a stimulating, exciting and safe environment. Positive relationships between staff and children, consistent routines and strong relationships with parents are key. We recognise the crucial role that early year’s education has to play in providing firm foundations upon which the rest of a child’s education is successfully based.
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Implementation
Teaching and learning is underpinned by the ‘Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning’ and the 6 R’s- Respect, Relationships, Resourcefulness, Risk-taking, Resilience and Reflectiveness. These skills will enable the children to become life-long learners who are inquisitive and curious about the world around them.
We prioritise creating a ‘language rich’ environment through the use of songs, nursery rhymes, stories and providing time for quality interactions between adults and peers. Children to flourish and gather words at pace in order to become confident communicators. They are encouraged to become early readers through enjoyment of books and the systematic teaching of phonics.
The children develop their mathematical thinking through story, direct teaching and exploration. We want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real life experiences.
We have built our environment to enable our children to strengthen their core muscles through physical play, children spend time outdoors in the setting and at Forest School in all weathers. They develop through exploratory, sensory experiences in our mud kitchen, water tray, sandpit and garden. Our learning environment is adaptable in order to reflect children's interests and progression. The children are supported to learn to work together, manage their feelings and ask questions through skilled adult facilitated play.
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The curriculum is taught through topics which are enriched with classroom enhancements, visits and visitors. The themes are supported by quality key texts, chosen carefully to encourage children's speech, language and communication development. All planning however, is flexible and responsive to children’s needs, plans can be changed and adapted reflecting the children’s interests.
Impact
At Burghill we strive to ensure each child makes a very good level of progress through to the Early Learning Goals at the end of Reception from their individual starting points in the Nursery.
We work closely with Key Stage 1 to continue the children’s development through the Foundation Stage and on to the National Curriculum. We aim to make the transition from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1 as smooth as possible, by sharing information gathered within the foundation stage and continuing the learning for the children as individuals.
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