EYFS

Overview of the Foundation Stage

The Reception Class is your child’s final year of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

This is a very important stage as it helps your child get ready for Year One as well as preparing them for their future learning and successes.

Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development.

Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:

  • Communication and language
  • Physical development
  • Personal, social and emotional development

These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning.

The prime areas will help children to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:

  • Literacy
  • Mathematics
  • Understanding of the World
  • Expressive arts and design

Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside. 

 

At St Joseph’s, we meet the welfare requirements laid down in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and actively safeguard and promote the welfare of all of our children. We prioritise creating a ‘language rich’ environment through the use of songs, nursery rhymes, stories and providing time for quality interactions between adults and between peers. Trained and experienced staff ensure that interactions are positive and progressive, allowing children to flourish and gather words at pace in order to become confident communicators. Children are encouraged to become early readers through enjoyment of books and the systematic teaching of phonics through the Little Wandle programme. The children learn nursery rhymes and develop their mathematical thinking through 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 school environment to enable our children to strengthen their core muscles through physical play, children spend time outdoors in all weathers. They develop through wonderful, exploratory, sensory experiences in our mud kitchen, 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. The curriculum is taught through topics which are enriched with classroom enhancements, trips and visitors. Topics are supported by quality key texts. These are chosen carefully to encourage children’s speech, language and communication development. All planning however, is flexible and responsive to children’s needs so plans can be changed and adapted dependent on children’s interests.
We understand the importance of parental engagement and believe that our parents have a crucial role to play in their children’s education. We work hard to create strong partnerships between home and school.  Parents have access to Tapestry which informs them of what their child is learning and to explain how they can support this at home. Parents enjoy using Tapestry to engage in their child’s learning and share experiences from home. As part of the learning and teaching process, children are assessed in relation to their progress towards the Early Learning Goals (ELGs). These judgements are made on the basis of accumulative observations and in-depth knowledge of the children acquired through ongoing assessments. These ongoing assessments are used to inform planning and next steps in teaching and learning for all children throughout the year.

Our School Day

During the day the children will learn in a variety of ways.

Throughout the day we have taught carpet sessions. Every day we will have Literacy and Numeracy carpet time. Throughout the week we will also learn through Come and See, Music, Art and Understanding the World.

The majority of the session will then be spent in ‘VIP’ time – Very Important Play. This is the time where children can choose their own learning focus and complete the challenges that they are set for the week. There will also be an adult directed activity alongside where children will have a taught small group activity.

Every day the children will have taught phonics session working from the Little Wandle scheme.

Children learn both indoors and outdoors and they can free flow throughout the day.

Children will have three specific guided reading sessions each week.