Early Years
At Nightingale Primary School, we pride ourselves on creating a happy, safe and nurturing environment within our Early Years Foundation Stage setting, where children develop their independence and creativity as learners.
Our curriculum is exciting and motivates children to love learning. We have created an environment where children develop resilience, friendships and positive relationships, which allows learning to be accessible for all, valuing everyone’s progress. We have a stimulating indoor and outdoor environment where children safely explore risks and challenge their own learning.
In Early Years we work closely and collaboratively with parents to ensure we value home experiences and develop a true reflection of the whole child, whilst effectively preparing children for the next stage in their school life. We will assess children on entry to build on the skills, knowledge and understanding that they have. This information is used to develop the children holistically and will ensure that all aspects of early childhood development are catered for.
In the Early Years at Nightingale Primary School, we promote a language-rich curriculum and know that this is essential to the successful acquisition across the curriculum. The development of speech and language is identified as one of the most important parts of our schools Early Years’ curriculum. The curriculum is progressive and coherently planned to incorporate child choice and to build upon the children’s current knowledge.
Implementation:
Across our EYFS, we follow the Early Years Statutory Framework. This Framework specifies the requirement for learning and development in the Early Years and provides prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum.
Prime Areas: Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development, Communication and Language development A Speech and Language Therapist works closely with the Nursery and Reception staff to screen the pupils level of understanding and vocabulary on entry and plan support where necessary. Timely interventions are delivered to support this such as Early Talk and Talk Boost.
Specific Areas: Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World, Expressive Arts and Design.
We also incorporate the characteristics of effective learning (COEL) into all teaching and learning experiences. The children are taught the skills required in the EYFS through weekly or half-termly topics which are coherently planned to build upon the children’s current knowledge and understanding by a cumulative sequence of lessons. The pupils are encouraged to wonder and ask questions about what they are learning, and this information is used to plan subsequent lessons. Parents are regularly informed about their child’s progress through Tapestry and Class Dojo, and they are provided with the expectations and requirements needed to meet the age-related expectations.
Written reports are also provided to inform parents of their progress and to give them the next steps of learning. Parents are provided with information on how to support their child at home and are invited to internal workshops. They are also invited to work on helping their child to learn their Set 1 Sounds, blend sounds together to read words and help their child to write their name.
Impact:
Through the delivery of a well-planned, child-led and challenging curriculum we aim that the pupils will leave the Early Years Foundation Stage as independent learners, with transferrable skills needed to start Key Stage One. This will be measured at the end of Reception as to whether the pupils have achieved a Good Level of Development.
We aim that our pupils will leave our Foundation stage ready for the next stage in their education and ready for Year 1 by:
- Using their phonics knowledge to read accurately with increasing speed and fluency.
- Write correctly punctuated simple sentences.
- Understanding and using early numbers.
- Having good personal, physical and social skills.
- Enjoying, listening attentively and responding with comprehension to familiar stories and rhymes.
- Demonstrating positive attitudes to learning through high levels of curiosity, concentration and enjoyment. Children will listen intently and respond positively to adults and each other.
- Being resilient learners who are keen to learn and are proud of their achievements.