Early Years Provision
We place great value on the development of children as individuals and providing them with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to prepare them for the challenges in Key Stage One and beyond.
We believe in providing a secure foundation for future learning and development of our children, developing happy and curious children who thrive in school and reach their full potential from their various starting points.
'I deeply believe in the profound importance of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in a child's educational journey. The early years are a critical time in a child’s development, laying the foundation for future learning and success. The skills and knowledge children acquire during these formative years, such as social skills, emotional regulation, basic numeracy and literacy, and an understanding of the world around them, are crucial for their growth and development throughout their entire school life.'
Our EYFS provides a nurturing, creative, and engaging environment that supports children's cognitive, social, and emotional growth. It is an opportunity to build a strong, positive relationship with learning, which fosters confidence, curiosity, and resilience - key attributes for success in later years.
However, the importance of the EYFS extends beyond just the classroom. Community engagement and involvement play a vital role in supporting children and ensuring they reach their full potential. When families, local communities, and schools collaborate, children benefit from a rich, supportive network that extends beyond school hours. Parent involvement, for example, can significantly enhance a child’s learning and development, ensuring a consistent approach both at home and in school.
Moreover, by engaging with local organisations, community groups, and external specialists, we can offer a wealth of resources and experiences that further enrich the curriculum. This holistic approach ensures that children have the best start in life, with access to diverse learning opportunities and support systems that nurture their individual needs, strengths, and interests. It is through this collective effort that we can give children the foundation they need to grow, thrive, and ultimately reach their potential.
Implementation
Pupils learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. The timetable is carefully structured so that children have rigorous directed teaching in English, maths and phonics everyday with regular circle time sessions to focus on PSED. These sessions are followed by group work where children work with a member of staff to develop their individual targets. This focused group time means the teacher can systematically check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning.
Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms and equal importance is given to learning in both areas. The curriculum is planned in a cross-curricular way to enable all aspects of the children’s development including understanding the world and expressive art and design as well as to promote sustained thinking and active learning.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. Children follow the rigorous and highly successful Read, Write Inc program faithfully so that they meet good outcomes for reading. We follow the CLPE approach to Literacy focusing on a text each half term. The texts are high quality texts which are both visually and language rich which engage, enrich and excite children.
We follow the Maths Mastery approach in Reception with an emphasis on studying key skills of number, calculation and shape so that pupils develop deep understanding and the acquisition of mathematical language. Pupils learn through games and tasks using concrete manipulatives which are then rehearsed and applied to their own learning during exploration. Nursery pupils begin to develop these key skills during daily maths meetings where they explore sorting, quantities, shape, number and counting awareness. These early mathematical experiences are carefully designed to help pupils remember the content they have been taught and to support them with integrating their new knowledge across the breadth of their experiences and into larger concepts.
Our inclusive approach means that all children learn together but we have a range of additional intervention and support to enhance and scaffold children who may not be reaching their potential or moving on children who are doing very well. Staff also use ‘pinny time’ which is a quick, on the spot intervention focused on sight words, blending and number retention with target individuals. The characteristics of effective learning are viewed as an integral part of all areas of learning and are reflected in our observations of children.
Impact
Our curriculum needs to meet the needs of our children, including our disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND. We want each child to get the best possible start in life and to be ready to thrive in Key Stage One. We do this by ensuring ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning process. Staff observe pupils and these observations are used to plan next steps and experiences which ensure progress. We use an online based learning journey to record assessments which are also shared by parents. We use this information to plan learning experiences and next steps so that knowledge and skills are built cumulatively. During each assessment window, three times a year, teachers update the progress children have made onto Otrack which allows us to assess the impact of teaching and evaluate whether it has been enough.
At the end of EYFS, staff completes the EYFS profile for each child. Pupils are assessed against the 17 early learning goals.The EYFS team meet for regular meetings and receive necessary training linked to the ADP .Teachers attend in house and external moderations and attend regular pupil progress meetings to ensure progress is being made for each individual child.
The EYFS lead is committed to raising standards by attending relevant CPD and ensuring each child at Co-op Academy Portland has the best start on their school journey.