EYFS CURRICULUM AT SANDHURST
INTENT
Rationale:
At Sandhurst Primary School and Nursery, we greatly value the importance of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in providing a secure foundation for future learning and development. We believe that every child is unique and ensure all children have the opportunity to learn in a safe and nurturing environment. Through practical learning experiences, we strive to equip children with a love of learning and a natural curiosity. We are committed to giving our pupils the best possible start to their school life, teaching them skills that ensure their well-being now and success in the future.
Ambition:
We aim to provide the highest quality care and education for all our children therefore giving them the strong foundation for their future. We aim to ensure that all our children develop into independent and lifelong learners by:
- Establishing an environment that is nurturing, bright and exciting and one that is full of interesting and challenging activities in which learning can take place.
- Establishing solid foundations and foster a deep love of learning.
- Enabling each child to develop socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually in order to thrive in a diverse and ever changing world.
- Offering a structure for learning that has a range of starting points and unlimited opportunity for development.
- Helping each child to recognise their own strengths and achievements by experiencing success and developing their resilience and confidence to work towards personal goals.
- Offering a broad and rich curriculum that responds to children’s interests, which informs planning.
- Building strong partnerships with parents and carers to enable children to reach their full potential.
- To ensure EYFS staff continue and build upon their professional development.
Concepts:
Our curriculum develops the characteristics of effective learning:
- Creating and thinking critically – pupils have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things
- Active learning – pupils keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy their achievements
- Playing and exploring – pupils investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
IMPLEMENTATION
We provide our children with a range of rich, meaningful first-hand experiences, in which they can explore, think creatively and are active. We provide a well -balanced curriculum and our planning ensures that each child has the opportunity to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding in every area of the EYFS.
Our high quality provision and layout allows children to select and use resources independently and develop their learning through a balance of child initiated and adult led learning. This includes the daily teaching of reading, writing and maths with opportunities for children to practise, revise and extend their knowledge. Our staff take an active role in observing, modelling and the use of open-ended questioning. They teach and extend play whilst developing skills and language through purposeful, high quality interactions.
Outdoor Learning is of equal importance as indoor learning and plan for children’s learning outside in the same way as we do for inside. The outdoor classroom offers children to explore learning on a much bigger, louder, and messier scale. The outdoor area offers challenges for children to work together, to solve problems, to take risks and to learn how to be safe, as well as to explore the natural world and experience the changes in weather and seasons. We therefore aim to offer free flow access to our outdoor learning areas throughout the school day
IMPACT
For our pupils to:
- Be independent, confident, enthusiastic and inquisitive learners across all areas of learning.
- Develop positive relationships with their peers and familiar adults
- Have the skills and knowledge ready for the next stage in their learning journey and the transition from the EYFS curriculum to the National Curriculum.