EYFS at Wincanton Primary School

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a statutory framework for 0-5 year olds. This framework will cover your child’s early educational experiences at early years settings such as nursery, preschool or with a Childminder. It also supports them in their Reception year at school.

The EYFS has 7 areas of learning. The PRIME areas are:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Communication and Language

Physical Development

The SPECIFIC areas are:

Literacy

Maths

Understanding the World

Expressive Art and Design

At the end of Reception children are assessed against 17 Early Learning Goals. These inform Key Stage 1 on whether children have reached a good level of development. The Early Learning Goals encapsulate the foundations of learning a child needs to be successful throughout KS1 and KS2 at Primary School.

At Wincanton Primary School we have written a curriculum to support children to have a wide range of skills and knowledge within their Reception year.

The skills they develop are focused around the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning. We have class dinosaurs that support children’s understanding of these characteristics.

Explorasaurus – Children that explore their environment to develop their own learning, they are willing to have a go at new at challenging experiences and they are able to be curious about the world to find out new information.

Tryosaurus- Children that are resilient when facing new challenges and will try, try and try again.

Thinkosaurus- Children have ideas about how the world works, can link ideas together and can solve problems in new and innovative ways.

The knowledge is split across the areas of learning.

Children’s personal, social and emotional development is vital to all other areas of learning. Within Reception they will need to develop their self-care and independence skills. Children will be able to name at least 1 way they can self-regulate e.g. breathing, counting, closing their eyes.

Children will be able to say how they are feeling and suggest at least 1 thing they could do when they are feeling that way. They can also offer a suggestion to a peer about what they should do when they are feeling a certain way.

Children can share resources within provision, negotiate turn taking and offer solutions to problems that arise when more than 1 child wants to engage in the same resource.

Children are independent in toileting and self-care routine. They wash their hands before snack and lunch and can talk about why this is important. They show an awareness of following a healthy diet and can talk about how they look after their teeth before school and before bed.

Children know when they are feeling hot or cold and can adapt their clothing to suit this need. E.g. get a coat if it is cold outside.

Children will develop their listening, attention, understanding and speaking skills. The children will know 6 CORE nursery rhymes. They will be able to continue the rhyme if an adult sings along with them but then stops.

They will be able to listen to an adult talking and follow key instructions. They will be able to listen to a peer talking and comment on something they have said.

They will use an increasing vocabulary to talk about the things they like and things they do not like. Children will have access to new vocabulary that they can use within their own sentences on a weekly basis. They will be able to ask and answer what, where, who and why questions.

Children will be able to talk about an event that has happened in the past to a familiar adult and to a peer. They will use connectives to link their thoughts and ideas.

Children will have opportunities to share things that have happened to them within their home environment by sharing updates from home via Tapestry APP. They will be able to talk about the learning they have chosen in their self-directed play when asked by a familiar adult.

Children will have views and opinions about questions or comments asked of them. They will confidently share these views in the way that suits them.

Within Reception children learn to read and write. We follow the Unlocking Letters and Sounds Systematic Phonics Programme. Within Reception children will learn Phase 2 and Phase 3 Grapheme/Phoneme correspondence. They will also learn Common Exception Words that are taught as sight words. They will use this knowledge to segment words in order to write. Children will be expected to be able to write a sentence with both Phase 2 and Phase 3 graphemes by the end of Reception.

In order to write successfully children need to hold a pencil successfully with suitable strength. In order to do this they need fully developed fine motor skills. Children’s pencil grips will be assessed termly so that they can have fine motor intervention supporting their shoulder, elbow and finger muscles to get them ready to write.

In Maths children will be able count objects, actions and sounds. They will be able to subitise successfully, which means they know how many objects are in a group without being able to count them. They will be able to match a quantity to a numeral. They will be able to compare 2 groups saying which has more or fewer. They will be able to explore the composition of numbers to 10 and learn their number bonds to 5 and then to 10 to develop fast and accurate addition and subtraction skills.

Although your child may be able to count beyond 20 and may enjoy exploring large numbers, it is important that the foundations of maths are learnt at a deep level so they truly understand the oneness of 1 and the twoness of 2. Therefore the EYFS has a real focus on the numbers from 0-10.

Just like the rest of the school our learning is focused around learning experiences however, in the EYFS these may change based on children’s interests. This enables children to be engaged and following their own lines of enquiry. Most Learning Experiences have a title that allows individual cohorts to go on a journey within the experience.

Within these learning experiences children have opportunities to learn about important people in history and now, their local community, the natural world around them, performance and expression and manipulating materials. This then underpins the foundation subjects they will learn in the National Curriculum.

The Learning Experiences have embedded the Curriculum Concepts for Wincanton Primary School.

The typical timetable within Reception is the following:-

8.50: Funky Fingers (fine motor) and Handwriting – Driven by fine motor assessment

9.00: Phonics following ULS scheme

9.30: Literacy followed by teacher directed focused groups

10.00: Continuous Provision

Adults will have Objective Led Planning to support their adult role within Continuous Provision. This enables them to know which area of learning children need support with and they take this into the child’s play.

Snack is a free flow snack so children can independently access free fruit and milk during the morning.

11.30: Regulation

12.00: Story

12.15: Lunch

1.15: Maths following Mastery Number scheme

2.00: Continuous Provision

Additional opportunities: Library time, Forest School, PE.