Children learning in Nursery and Reception classes are known as the Early Years Foundation Stage or EYFS for short. We follow the statutory EYFS Framework for teaching and development. This stage is very important in a child’s life as it helps prepare for school ‘readiness’ as well as preparing them for their future learning and successes.
The EYFS Framework explains how and what children will be learning to support their healthy development and provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.
Children learn skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development, these are split into Prime and Specific areas.
Children start developing in the 3 prime areas first. These are:
These prime areas are those most essential for a child’s healthy development and future learning, these weave through our Early Years Curriculum
As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:
All 7 areas of learning are used to plan children’s learning and activities. We make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. This is a little bit like the curriculum in the rest of the school but it's suitable for very young children, and it's designed to be really flexible so that staff can follow your child's unique needs and interests, while also teaching them the most important skills and knowledge to prepare them for future learning.
Assessment plays an important part in helping parents, carers, teachers and other adults to recognise children’s progress, understand their needs, and to plan activities and support. Ongoing assessment is an important part of what we do. We continually make observations about each child's learning and development and use these observations to identify learning priorities and plan relevant learning experiences for each child.
The EYFS curriculum consists of 17 goals for learning or 'Early Learning Goals', we use these to make final assessments on your child's learning and development at the end of the Reception Year.
To find out more about the Early Learning Goals click the link below.
Teachers indicate whether children are meeting expected levels of development:
These judgements are shared with parents in the annual report and Year 1 teachers during transition meetings between Reception and Year 1 teachers. They are used to assist with the planning of learning at the start of Year 1.