Mellis Church of England Primary School - 'To Be Our Best'

'Play is often talked about as if it is a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play really is the work of childhood.'

Fred Rogers.

Overview of the teaching and learning of Early Years

Intent:

In EYFS we put the children we teach at the heart of everything we do. Our Early Years curriculum is designed to give every child the opportunity to develop to their full potential at their own pace. We have a strong focus on learning behaviours, praising the characteristics of learning, how they learn and not just the learning outcomes, what they are learning. We have high expectations of the children and thorough assessment and understanding of them as individuals enable us to provide them with the support they need at each stage of their learning journey.  

Implementation:

• Children receive three focused teaching inputs daily – in Maths, phonics and another area (e.g RE, PE, Music)
• Children then move into continuous provision where they self-select activities.
• Adults in the classroom support and teach children in their child initiated activities, moving their learning on by teaching, supporting, scaffolding and questioning as appropriate.
• The Early Years staff are very experienced.
• Our classroom environment is well organised and labelled to enable children to access all areas of learning independently. This environment is structured based on the individual needs and interests of each cohort. Our environment is fluid and is adapted when appropriate.
• Our transition programme works well to support the children as they start school. Priority is given to their wellbeing at this stage in their school life which then impacts their learning.
• We have strong links with parents – e.g. parent’s welcome and phonics meetings, home visits, two way emails via 2buildaprofile.
• We follow the maths mastery approach which is continued throughout the school.
• We teach phonics daily using the systematic synthetic phonics approach with Letters and sounds and combine this with the kinaesthetic approach of Jolly Phonics.
• We ensure stories and rhymes are shared daily.

Impact:

Children will leave the Reception class with strong learning behaviours. They will have self- confidence, resilience and be able to be independent learners. They will have developed good listening skills and be able to express their views with confidence. They will have detailed knowledge across the seven areas of learning in preparation for the Year One curriculum.  They will be able to use their phonics to read more fluently and have developed a love of reading and listening to stories and rhymes. They will have a good grasp of the basic mathematical skills and will have developed these according to age and ability. They will be able to manage their feelings and understand the importance of following rules in school and society.