EYFS

EYFS Vision 

‘The earliest years in a child’s life are absolutely critical. There is overwhelming international evidence that foundations are laid in the first years of life which, if weak, can have a permanent and detrimental impact on children’s longer term development. A child’s future choices, attainment, wellbeing, happiness and resilience are profoundly affected by the quality of the guidance, love and care they receive during these first years.’ 

The Early Years: Foundations for life, health and learning – Tickell 2011 

We believe every child deserves a high quality, inclusive early education, which provides the foundations for future learning. We want our children to feel happy, safe and secure to enable them to become independent, resilient learners. Staff nurture children, making them feel valued and developing their confidence and motivation to learn. We value the prior experiences children bring with them when they start school and we form positive relationships with families through our strong transition, building on these relationships throughout the year. 

We recognise that children learn in different ways and we plan our curriculum to reflect this, using a balance of adult and child directed and guided learning to ensure the best outcomes for each child. 

‘Achieving an effective balance between child-initiated and adult-directed approaches, and differentiating these for children’s level of development, is crucially important for effective teaching and good outcomes. So too is the quality and nature of the indoor and outdoor learning environment.’ 

The Hundred Review executive summary 2017 

We are committed to providing the highest standards of teaching and learning through intentional teaching, encouragement, challenge, support and praise. We use a thematic approach to encourage the children to explore, develop and represent their learning experiences in different ways to help them make sense of the world around them and the cultural capital required for their future success 

We use the 4 principles of the EYFS – a unique child, positive relationships, enabling environments and learning and development- in our practice (Statutory framework for the EYFS) to enable our children to learn successfully and play purposefully. The characteristics of effective learning are developed through these 4 principles and they describe behaviours children use in order to learn. 

‘To learn well, children must approach opportunities with curiosity, energy and enthusiasm. Effective learning must be meaningful to a child, so that they are able to use what they have learned and apply it in new situations’ (Birth to 5 Matters). 

To support the delivery and assessment of the seven areas of learning and development as set out in the Statutory Framework, we use ‘Development Matters’. 

Our curriculum focuses on immersing children in a language rich environment, enabling children to extend and develop their vocabulary through high quality stories, play and interactions between adults and peers.