EYFS Curriculum
What pupils are taught in the Early Year Foundation Stage.
EYFS Curriculum Implementation
Practitioners use every available opportunity, to create a learning opportunity. Learning is carefully planned to meet children’s individual needs through direct adult input and engagement in continuous provision. Staff meet regularly to discuss pupils’ achievements and needs allowing for all staff to be able to support a child’s development.
Adults understand children’s knowledge, their gaps, strengths and ways forward as well as how they develop learning to ensure all children reach their fullest potential.
- At St Charles’, we create a busy yet calm environment with high levels of engagement. We carefully track pupils progress and needs in order to ensure provision is reflective of this and supports high quality interactions.
- The outdoor is accessed in all weathers throughout the year through the use of waterproofs and wellies. All areas are accessible each day so children know what they will be able to access before they even arrive in school. Carefully planned and chosen enhancements are added to develop and support learning through play.
Retrieval is intrinsically built into our everyday practice and can be seen at all levels in both adult led sessions and during continuous provision.
Enabling Environments
The Inside Environment
Our environment is at the heart of our EYFS. Our children have the right to a welcoming, exciting, supportive and challenging environment.
Our environment:
- Is language rich and promotes vocabulary and social interactions in all provision areas.
- Has been carefully designed with a clear layout and defined areas. We position these areas to avoid large open runways and to have enclosed clear areas.
- Our areas are all available every day and the children know what they will have available everyday. This allows them to retrieve from previous learning as well as build on the previous days play and bring an element of planning into their play.
- All of our resources are designed and laid out for children to access independently. Use of clear labelling of resources support this as well as providing support to tidy items away.
- We maintain interest in areas by adding carefully thought-out enhancements and challenges. These aim to deepen learning through play and widen their experiences and give them opportunities to expand their vocabulary.
- Books are in all areas of learning to promote the children’s love of reading.
- Mark-making, writing and maths opportunities are created in different areas of the provision.
- As with all provision areas both inside and out, adults develop good relationships with the children and support effective interactions to develop children as learners.
- Is clutter free to allow children to clearly see provision and opportunities for learning.
The Outdoor environment
At St Charles’ we value our outdoor learning as much as our indoor. We recognise that children learn how to learn outside and that some learn best whilst the are outside.
As well as mirroring the high expectations for indoor provision, the outdoor environment:
- Promotes larger scale play that can only be accomplished in an outdoor setting as well as support the learning which is taking place in the indoor provision.
- Is accessible in all weathers and throughout the whole year and therefore we always have available waterproof jackets, trousers and wellies. Children are also welcome to bring their own.
- Mirrors the expectations of mark-making, writing and maths opportunities across the different areas of the provision.
- Uses carefully selected enhancements to promote deeper learning and extend the children’s skills.
Planning
At St Charles’ we have a Long-Term Plan for EYFS which gives an overview of our overarching themes for each half term and how each area of learning will be met over the year. This is then used to develop the medium-term plans which are carefully planned to suit each cohort of children. Short term planning is then used to ensure all adults are aware of the weekly learning intentions as well as individual targets for each child to allow them to develop and progress from their individual starting point.
