EYFS
Our early years setting has developed a broad and challenging curriculum based on the recognition that children learn best through play and active learning.
Our curriculum is based on key texts, arranged into broad themes, chosen specifically for our children at Eaton Bray Academy at this current time. The key texts expose the children to classic children’s literature, repetition and rhyme and the protected characteristics. They provide a starting point for the children’s learning, building on what they already know and embracing the children’s own cultural experiences that they bring to the setting. Our themes are broad and are just a starting point for ideas, leaving space to build on children’s own learning and let individual cohorts direct the course of future learning.
The EYFS framework has 7 areas of learning and development. All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected.
The three prime areas are particularly important for learning and forming relationships. They build a foundation for children to thrive and provide the basis for learning in all areas.
The prime areas are:
- Communication and language
- Physical development
- Personal, social and emotional development
The prime areas are strengthened and developed by the 4 specific areas:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
The specific areas ignite children’s curiosity and enthusiasm.
The overarching goals for our children are embedded in the characteristics of effective learning:
- Playing and exploring - children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
- Active learning - children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements.
- Creating and thinking critically - children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
Drawn from both Development Matters and Birth to 5 matters, these build towards a singular, achievable and ambitious goal for all our EYFS children to be a happy confident and effective learner.
Quality interactions are at the heart of our teaching in the EYFS. This includes communicating and modelling language, showing, explaining, demonstrating, exploring ideas, encouraging, questioning, recalling, providing a narrative for what the children are doing and facilitating challenge. The environment and the continuous provision, designed by the adults in the setting, also acts as a teacher to the children.
Each area of learning and development is implemented through play and a mix of adult-led and child-initiated activities. Our outdoor environments offer our children a wide range of learning opportunities including weekly Forest School sessions. Our practitioners know what they want children in their setting to learn, and facilitate the most effective ways to teach it. They provide inspiration to stimulate children’s interests, responding to each child’s emerging needs and guiding their development through warm, positive interactions coupled with secure routines for play and learning.
As the children progress, we adapt our Year 1 setting to reflect that of our EYFS environment to ensure that transition to KS1 can be a positive and nurturing experience.