Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
Policy & PhilosophyProgression in Learning
Welcome to Woodlands Early Years
Throughout their reception year, your child will engage in an ambitious curriculum which is designed in a sequential way to ensure progress towards our end of year curricular goals.
At Beech Grove Primary School, our curriculum incorporates everything we want the children to experience, know and be able to do. It meets all the requirements of the educational programmes in the statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and has the flexibility to allow us to respond quickly to children’s new interests and/or needs.
Our INTENT for our chil
dren is for them to enter the next stage of their education ready to tackle new challenges with confidence and a positive mindset.
Please click here to see our full intent, implementation and impact statement.
Our curriculum has been carefully sequenced so that children are continuously challenged to build on their prior learning and to ensure they leave their reception year ready for key stage one.
Throughout the year, the children will progress towards a set of curriculum goals, as shown below (please click here to see a larger version).
The children will engage in activities, experiences and discrete, well designed teaching sequences, in order to achieve the curricular outcomes.
The curriculum we provide ensures progressive development of skills, vocabulary and knowledge in the 7 areas of learning, which form a firm foundation for their future learning.
Our weekly timetable changes each year and over time, as the needs of every cohort are different.
This year, we have a mixed YR/Y1 class and we are successfully implementing both the EYFS curriculum, with ample opportunities for uninterrupted play-based explorations, and the KS1 curriculum, with a more structured approach to subject teaching.
This has allowed us to provide an individualised approach to each child based on their stage of development rather than their age. Some of our YR pupils love to access the Y1 learning!
To see our progression of learning through the 7 areas of the EYFS, please click here.
To find out more about the IMPLEMENTATION of our EYFS curriculum, including our approach to early reading and early maths, please take a look at our EYFS policy.
For more information on our phonics programme, please take a look at the Phonics and Early Reading page of our website.
Talk for Writing approach in EYFS
Story making is one of our favourite steps in the Talk for Writing sequence. The teacher makes a story with the children, using our 'Tell me a story' board. We make sure the children focus on the characters and settings as well as using the story sentence starters. After that, the children work on their own invented stories.
Over the course of the term, an adult invites each child to tell them their story. These are recorded in a special Hedgehogs and Dormice story book. The adults record the story as it is told, and the children write a few of the words themselves (depending on their confidence and phonics stage).
Twice a week, we have a designated time, when we act out each of the stories. Every one takes part – we have had the children pretending to be a log (Jack lived next to a log!), children who are shops, a group who made the scary, four-headed alien and a huge pot of boiling water to defeat the baddie. We even had a team who wriggled their fingers and pretended to be the spaghetti that Jack had for his tea!
The IMPACT of our curriculum is clear; a high proportion of our children leave the EYFS having achieved a 'Good Level of Development' (GLD). The emphasis we place on reading ensures pupils not only make a strong start in learning their phonics, they also experience the joy and pleasure that reading can offer. As a result, the percentage of children who pass the Year 1 phonics screening check is well above the national average.
Our progression documents feed seamlessly into the wider school curriculum, aiding our pupils' transition into Year 1.
The firm foundations we give our children ensure they possess the skills, knowledge and attitudes they need to become successful life-long learners. They leave us knowing how to overcome obstacles, solve problems and flourish through positive relationships with their peers and community.
