The Early Years Foundation Stage
Intent
At Burghill Community Academy we want children to be happy confident, well rounded individuals with a love for learning. We believe in providing all children with a safe and stimulating environment that builds on each individual’s wants, needs and interests. We believe that all our children matter and we give them every opportunity to achieve their best.
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Our curriculum is designed to recognise children’s prior learning, both from previous settings and their experiences at home. We work in partnership with parents, carers and other settings to provide the best possible start, ensuring each individual reaches their full potential from their various starting points.
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Children should have the opportunity to learn through play. Learning should be fun, engaging and suitably challenging. We value the importance of our outdoor environment and believe that it offers children the opportunity to develop their thinking and problem solving skills.
The ‘Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning’ and the 6 R’s- Respect, Relationships, Resourcefulness, Risk-taking, Resilience and Reflectiveness lie at the heart of our curriculum. These skills embedded in a broad, balanced and adapted curriculum will enable the children to become life-long learners who are inquisitive and curious about the world around them.
Adults provide high quality interactions and they are role models for learning. We are committed to providing the best possible start to each child’s school life, teaching them skills and giving those experiences that will ensure their well-being now and their success in the future. We believe in a strong emphasis on play and seek a balance between child-led and adult directed activities. We base our model on the following approaches. Adult planned sequential learning - to ensure all children make progress; Adult interactions – to maximise learning opportunities and capitalise on teachable moments; and child-led learning – to allow the children to practise and rehearse the skills they have been taught.
Our timetable prioritises child initiated learning and the role of the adult in the environment. We support this with planned daily teaching of phonics, maths and reading, as well as planned activities to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum that covers the educational programme.
By the end of the Reception year, our intent is to ensure that all children make at least good progress from their starting points are equipped with the skills and knowledge to have a smooth transition into Year 1.
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Implementation
Each half term, across the EYFS, staff introduce a new theme to provide inspiration for learning, whilst providing the flexibility for children to follow their own interests and ideas. Children learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. The day is carefully structured so that children have some teaching supplemented with small group work and one to one adult interactions during child initiated play, This allows the adult to check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback.
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The sessions remain flexible to take into consideration the changing needs of the children. They are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms and equal importance is given to learning in both areas.
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Our inclusive approach means that all children learn together, but we have a range of additional intervention and support for children who may not be reaching their potential, or are showing a greater depth of understanding and need further challenge. This includes, for example, sessions for developing speech and language, social skills, fine motor skills, phonics, and mathematics.
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Impact
At Burghill we strive to ensure each child makes an excellent level of progress from their individual starting points in Pre-school through to the Early Learning Goals at the end of their Reception year.
​Prior to children starting Muddy Boots or school, staff spend time speaking to the child’s parents and previous settings to gain an understanding of the whole child. Children and their families are invited to attend settling sessions to support this sharing of information and to help staff and families get to know each other. Once children attend, practitioners carry out a range of fun and interactive tasks with the children, as well as observing them in play. This identifies each individual’s starting points in all areas and we can then plan experiences to ensure progress.
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All ongoing observations are used to inform weekly planning and identify children’s next steps. This formative assessment does not involve prolonged periods of time away from the children and excessive paper work. Practitioners draw on their knowledge of the child and their own expert professional judgements through discussions with other practitioners, photographs and physical examples such as a child’s drawing or mark making
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We feedback to parents and carers regularly, sharing their children's journey and next steps to enable working in partnership in their child's development.
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Impact is also evident through our successful transitions into Year 1. EYFS staff have a good understanding of how ELG’s link to the National Curriculum, and through our robust planning and delivery across the spectrum of subjects – both core and foundation - children leave the EYFS stage with the skills, knowledge and confidence to continue their journey as scientists, historians, artists and geographers.
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