Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Curriculum

Intent, Implementation and Impact

EYFS Intent

At Greatfield Park we believe that a child’s time in the early years is critical to their development throughout school and later life. 

We follow the EYFS framework, which is a statutory framework that sets the standards that all early years’ providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well, are kept healthy and safe and have the knowledge and skills they need to start school. 

We use Development Matters, which is the non-statutory curriculum guidance for the EYFS framework that offers a top-level view of how children develop and learn, to support us in providing a quality education for each child. Development Matters covers a range of Areas of Learning and Development, from reading to maths and beyond.

We use the Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL) to support children and make sense of how the children are learning, in order to provide high quality teaching and learning outcomes.  The CoEL focus’ on three key elements; engagement, motivation and thinking.  Making observations and knowing how to support children as individuals is at the heart of understanding the importance of the characteristics of effective learning.  

All children will quickly become part of the school family.  They will learn about our school vision of learning and thriving together to achieve our dreams, and will learn the values of being a determined, respectful, excellent, aspirational, mindful and supportive member of the school and wider community.  Alongside this, the children will learn to follow the school rules of being ready, respectful and safe. 

EYFS Implementation

The EYFS statutory framework is organised across seven areas of learning.

The prime areas of learning and development are important because they lay the foundations for children's success in all other areas of learning and of life.  Children will be given opportunities to learn skills within: Communication and Language, Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Physical Development.

Children will learn their phonics through the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme.  RWI is a proven synthetic phonics programme that ensures early success in reading, writing and spelling.  Children will also be given as many opportunities as possible to develop their Literacy skills through project-based learning.

Children will follow the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) to learn Mathematics.  NCETM is a framework to support the planning and teaching of Mathematics.  White Rose Maths resources will also be used to complement the NCETM resources, especially when teaching numerical patterns.

Children will follow a creative project-based approach to learning.  Cornerstones Curriculum 22 will be used as a tool for providing coverage within the areas of Understanding the World and Expressive Art and Design.

Following the Characteristics of Effective Learning, children will be:

Playing and Exploring

• Provide engaging learning environments that suit the individual child’s interests and sensory play experiences that stimulate their curiosity, leading them to deep and meaningful playing and exploring.
• Help to develop children’s confidence and willingness to try.
• Offer children activities and toys of interest to them. Using familiar resources to develop children’s skills will help children to feel more comfortable and at ease. This will enable them to build their sense of self and, in time, increase their confidence to try more.
• Model that things go wrong or could go wrong, but it is ok for things to go wrong, and by getting things wrong, we learn.
• Model and show the children how to play, discover and use the resources provided.

Active Learning

• Provide learning opportunities in an exciting and enabling environment.
• Provide opportunities for new or unusual play; a range of open-ended, problem-solving resources that challenge and evoke questions.
• Make learning enjoyable and engaging, instilling a sense of the unknown and wonder.
• Plan opportunities for collaborative play and learning, encouraging talk and sharing ideas.
• Model, support and scaffold motivation, in order to develop self-motivation, concentration and perseverance.
• Identify and achieve goals and celebrate them, no matter how big or small.
• Allow children to leave their creations for others to see rather than tidying them away as this will motivate them to keep on trying the next time too.

Creating and Thinking Critically

• Make careful observations of children to provide us with opportunities to guide individuals to the next step in their learning.
• Support children with their ideas to make links and connections and to help their understanding of new concepts. 
• Provide an environment with many opportunities for different ways to express themselves, such as role-play, construction and art.
• Provide children with positive opportunities to play with adults and to have access to open-ended activities and begin to seek alternative possibilities to play situations. 
• Support a child over time, using and modelling language skills effectively to show a child thought processes and how theirs may look.
• Give children time to experiment, think and talk, to ask questions, leading to a deeper and different understanding of the world

Our EYFS long-term curriculum overview is on our main curriculum overview document, alongside our Year 1-Year 6 curriculum,  on our curriculum page. It can also be found below, on its own.

EYFS Impact

The impact for our EYFS curriculum will be evidenced through pupil voice, pupil engagement and quality of work produced.  Further evidence will come from:

• Progression of Skills Document
• Progression of Vocabulary Document
• National Baseline Assessment
• Tapestry (photographic evidence, online learning journal)
• Phonics, Literacy and Mathematic Books
• RWI Assessments
• EYFS Profile (a statutory assessment carried out at the end of the Reception year, to assess the children’s development in accordance with the seven early learning goals and how children demonstrate the three characteristics of effective learning).