Children in Reception and Nursery follow a different curriculum to the rest of the school – they follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum, covering seven areas of learning in total.

The EYFS curriculum has three prime areas of learning:

• Communication and Language –  to develop confidence and skills in expressing ideas and to speak and listen in a range of situations.
• Physical Development – to develop co-ordination, control and movement. To understand the importance of physical activity and make healthy choices.
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development – to form positive relationships and develop respect for each other, to develop social skills, learn how to manage feelings, understand appropriate behaviour and have confidence in abilities.

The four specific areas of learning are:

• Literacy – encourages children to link sounds and letters to begin to read and write.
• Maths –  provides children with opportunities to develop and improve counting, using numbers, simple addition and subtraction and to describe shapes, spaces and measures.
• Understanding the world – guiding children to make sense of their physical world and community and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
• Expressive arts and design – children are enabled to share thoughts and feelings through art, music, movement, role play, design and technology.Children have a great start to school life in our Reception class. They have lots of fun and enjoy new experiences every day. The Early Years learning environment is attractive and well resourced, inside and out, ensuring they develop the skills they require to become confident, and independent, learners. All children develop at their own rate and this is reflected in the individualised learning opportunities which we provide for the children.Planning in Reception is led by the children. We follow some whole school topics, which the children are naturally curious about including Harvest, Children In Need and Christmas. However, other topics are set by the children, the children have started playing police and fire so they will learn about ‘People Who Help Us’. The adults working in the Early Years classroom are trained to build on children’s learning ensuring that they understand the relevance of the skills they have learnt and can therefore apply them in everyday life. It also guarantees that learning is linked entirely to the children’s interests and therefore engages the children fully.Although staff are constantly challenging and questioning children to support their development in all areas of the curriculum, our main priority is to ensure that the children always feel happy and safe!

Phonics

The children in EYFS and Year 1 have daily phonics sessions. We use a Department of Education validated phonics programme - Little Wandle. 

At the end of Year 1, the children take part in the statutory phonics screening check which takes place in all schools nationally. We are very proud of our children’s achievements.