Moulton Primary School
Early Years Foundation Stage
Intent
At Moulton Primary, we regard every child as unique and believe that children should experience the best possible start to their educational life, enjoy the feeling of success, and reach their full potential. We appreciate that children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates. Thus, it is our priority to ensure that our curriculum reflects the needs of all our children and is carefully planned for them. To help us build on a child’s prior knowledge and discover their own unique interests and talents, we work closely with children’s pre-school settings and forge strong home-school partnerships.
Within our curriculum we teach children through directed and child-initiated activities providing rich opportunities for learning through play in all areas of the setting. We believe that an enabling environment, teamed with high quality adult interactions, allows children to experience meaningful learning across all areas. The early years curriculum is designed around the seven interconnected areas of learning and development. There is a strong emphasis placed on the three Prime Areas, as we regard these areas particularly crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and flourish.
Prime Areas of Learning:
Communication and language Development: We give children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations demonstrating a good understanding.
Physical development: We provide opportunities for children to be active and interactive; and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. We help children to understand the importance of physical activity and to make healthy choices in relation to food.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development: We help children to develop a positive sense of themselves, and others; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.
Other specific areas of Learning:
Literacy: We encourage children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children are given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest and help develop a life-long love of reading.
Mathematics: We provide children with opportunities to develop a strong grounding in number. Children become confident in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces, and measure.
Understanding the World: We guide children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
Expressive Arts and Design: We enable children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, imagination, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.
Implementation
Play underpins learning and all aspects of children’s development. Through play children learn to explore their immediate environments, which enables them to form links in their learning and begin to make sense of the world they live in. Children develop a positive attitude towards learning, practise new ideas and skills, take risks, show imagination, solve problems and work collaboratively with their peers. Purposeful play also enables children to develop confidence, persistence and resilience skills as outlined in the Characteristics of Effective Learning.
Our curriculum allows for all year round outdoor learning as well as indoor learning. The carefully planned provision ensures that the children have continuous access to different learning areas, which help to develop the whole child. At Moulton we encourage the children to “have a go” at new and challenging activities. They are encouraged to play and explore creative, construction, imaginative, literacy, mathematical and physical activities. Children are taught to be independent in their choices of play and have daily opportunities to free flow throughout the setting. Children are encouraged to think ahead and plan their ideas where appropriate. Adults carefully support them in both adult led and directed child initiated activities offering guidance where needed and modelling how to evaluate, problem solve and come up with their own ideas. These challenging learning opportunities also help to stretch their understanding and build resilience for tricky tasks.
At Moulton we believe that teaching children to read helps change their lives! We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme. This progressive systematic synthetic phonics programme allows for continuity of teaching, gives children the confidence to become fluent readers and helps to instil a life- long love of reading. During the daily phonics sessions children are taught to read letters, pronounce letter sounds and skillfully blend letter sounds together to read words. Our story times, guided reading and Drawing Club sessions ensure that we expose our children to a wide range of books and texts. Children’s individual reading books are carefully tailored to their phonics knowledge skills.
We follow the Kinetic Letters programme to teach children how to develop their handwriting skills. Through daily sessions, letter formation, orientation and placement of letters becomes automatic to children. They quickly begin to develop a legible and fluent handwriting style which gives them the confidence to write independently.
Impact
We continually assess children’s attainment and progress using the Development Matters stages of development. Our continuous formative assessments and observations help build up a clear picture of the whole child not only in relation to their attainment progress in meeting the Early Learning Goals, but also to their personality, preferred learning styles and interests.
We take into account children’s term of birth to ensure children are on track for typical development. Where children are not on track for achieving the Early Learning Goals, we target children’s needs and provide the necessary interventions whether this is through direct teaching, linked provision, continuous or enhanced provision.
We expect the vast majority of children in the early years to achieve the 17 Early Learning Goals which summarise the knowledge, skills and understanding that all young children should have gained by the end of the Reception year in the seven areas of learning and development.
Our provision gives young children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through the child’s Moulton Primary School journey and in life.
Equal Opportunities, Inclusion and Special Education Needs:
We believe that all children have a right to a full and inclusive education and as such we aim to deliver a curriculum that is accessible to all children irrespective of their race and cultural heritage, gender or disability. We aim to set a challenging curriculum that enhances the learning of children with special educational needs.
