Welcome to our EYFS page! Please click the links below to find out about our individual year groups.
Nursery
Reception
Vision
- No pupil’s educational success should be limited by their socio-economic background
- Our pupils should be reading confidently by 6 so that they can access a rich curriculum
- We work closely with our community to achieve high standards in all we do
Intent
At Mead we recognise the fundamental role a child’s early experience plays in shaping the person and learner they become. As a cohesive team we share the core belief that our role is to ensure that all children become life-long learners who are happy, curious, creative, confident and engaged. Through designing a curriculum with our children at the very heart of it we ensure that they have the opportunity to develop the characteristics of effective learning.
We provide children with a safe, stimulating and challenging environment which enables them to thrive and become independent, resilient individuals who feel a strong sense of belonging within our school community. Our EYFS curriculum is designed to underpin strong foundations across the prime and specific areas of learning which support the progression in knowledge and skills required for Key Stage 1 and beyond.
As part of a rich and broad curriculum, the children receive high quality directed learning in the form of Mastering Number and White Rose Maths to support the Maths Curriculum and Read, Write, Inc Synthetic Phonics to support early reading. By encouraging songs, rhymes and poems and carefully selecting stories we introduce and embed vocabulary and language structures to ensure a language rich environment to ensure that ‘Our pupils should be reading confidently by 6 so that they can access a rich curriculum’. We are deliberate in the choices that we make in our curriculum and initiatives are carefully selected to promote a deep understanding of concepts, placing a high emphasis on vocabulary development to ensure that ‘No pupil’s educational success is limited by their socio-economic background.’ Investing in these initiatives as a school, ensures our children are following a carefully scaffolded curriculum in mathematics, phonics and reading informed by current educational research which builds upon prior learning carefully as our children progress into KS1 and KS2. We ‘We work closely with our community to achieve high standards in all we do’ and ensure that all children have the opportunity to
As part of the DFE’s Statutory guidance, play is an integral component of the Early Years provision. Play enables children to consolidate key learning, for them to follow their own interests and collaborate positively with their peers and adults, supporting them to build positive relationships. We recognise the importance of the role of the adult to develop strong relationships with children through quality interactions. Through modelling, explaining, demonstrating, encouraging and facilitating purposeful play and learning we ensure that we are consistently promoting a language rich environment.
Opportunities throughout the day ensure that children are able to engage in high quality play and learning inside and out. The continuous provision allows children the opportunity to revisit learning and consolidate knowledge and skills with independent accessibility to resources. Adults know their children well and respond to their learning needs. Enhancements are purposefully planned to deepen learning and allow children to explore, discover and revisit knowledge and skills.
We further encourage and inspire children through positive outdoor experiences through access to Forest School. Children have the opportunity to learn about the natural environment, risk taking and and most importantly to use their own initiative to solve problems and cooperate with others. The children explore through play, learn boundaries of behaviour; both physical and social, establish and grow in confidence, self-esteem and become self-motivated.
We believe the effective characteristics of learning in the Early Years support children in becoming life-long learners. We regularly review the opportunities provided for our children in our provision in order to meet individual needs.
Characteristics of Effective Learning
Playing and exploring: – Children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’. Children who actively participate in their own play develop a larger store of information and experiences to draw on which positively supports their learning
Active learning: – Children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties. They are proud of their own achievements. For children to develop into self-regulating, lifelong learners they are required to take ownership, accept challenges and learn persistence.
Creating and thinking critically: – Children develop their own ideas and make links between these ideas. They think flexibly and rationally, drawing on previous experiences which help them to solve problems and reach conclusions.
Implementation
Please refer to our Long Term and Medium Term planning documents which give an insight into how we meet the EYFS curriculum expectations across the wider curriculum across the academic year.
Environment
Our continuous provision areas are based on the Early Excellence principle of using high quality resources that provide a range of open ended learning opportunities to ensure the children can follow their interests and meet their next steps. We fully recognise the importance of the outdoor environment and ensure children have access to the wide range of opportunities this provides as often as possible.
Assessment Cycle
On-going formative assessment is at the heart of our EYFS practice. At Mead Primary EYFS practitioners ensure quality interactions following an approach called the SHREC approach to engage and be involved with children during their play based activity, across all areas of learning. Through this, teachers are able to gather a clear picture of where children are in their learning and any gaps they may have. We provide effective and focused intervention for those children who are finding learning challenging and are not on track to meet expectations at the end of the year. This will be provided in an inclusive way and support from parents is also enlisted at an early stage to ensure that the children have every chance to achieve the Early Learning Goals. Staff meet regularly to discuss observations made and use them to plan the next steps in learning.
Timetable
Our timetables are designed to create balance between whole class tasks, child initiated and adult-led play based learning. Our day is structured to give the children enough time to engage and be involved in their learning. We value the importance of outdoor learning and fully recognise the benefits it has.
Reading
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and through a rich story based curriculum we encourage a love of reading right from the start. The children are exposed to a range of quality books that not only develop a love of reading, but have been chosen specifically to develop their oracy, vocabulary and comprehension. The books are kept on display for children to access independently. Through this, children begin to internalise new vocabulary, language patterns and begin to retell stories.
Phonics
We are a Read Write Inc. school and children start their journey in Reception. We have chosen RWI Phonics because it is a fast-paced, rigorous and structured phonics programme which helps get every child reading whilst also giving teachers the confidence and skills to deliver high-quality teaching every day. Every child is encouraged to read the text for meaning with five readings of each story to ensure that the story is understood and read with fluency and expression. Children in Nursery develop their skills through learning to listen and building upon their ability to be able to differentiate different sounds. We teach the children to be able to remember sounds and talk about sounds that they can hear. A planned Nursery Rhyme programme also helps the children to tune into rhyme and word patterns.
Maths
In Nursery, children develop a love of maths through games, songs, rhymes, and play using concrete manipulatives. There is a focus on the following counting principles; one to one correspondence, stable order and cardinal principle. Children’s fine manipulative skills are a focus to develop 1-1 correspondence so children count each object only once. As the children progress into Reception we follow the White Rose Maths Scheme of work and Mastering Maths. Through practical activities the children explore key concepts ,High quality learning environments and meaningful interactions with adults, support children in developing mathematical thinking and discussion. Pupils learn through games and tasks using concrete manipulatives and pictorial structures and representations which are then rehearsed, applied and recorded within their own child-led exploration. Children in Reception have daily adult-led maths inputs to develop fluency, revisit key concepts and address misconceptions.
Experiences and Enrichment
We plan a wide variety of enrichment experiences for our children. These are based both on their current interests (to extend learning),and offering new opportunities to the children .
Impact
The impact of the EYFS curriculum is reflected in having well rounded, happy and confident children transitioning into Year 1 with the necessary knowledge and skills to access the National Curriculum. We measure progress and children’s individual next steps for learning across the year through formative and summative assessment, based on the teacher’s knowledge of the child. Our overall aim is to ensure that we continue to improve the percentage of children achieving a Good Level of Development by the end of Reception. If our children are not meeting their Early Learning goals we work to ensure that they have made individual progress and staff are aware of their next steps. This information is shared with year 1 staff to ensure a smooth transition.