Early Years Foundation Stage

Gomeldon Primary School strives to be an inspirational learning community in which everyone is valued, supported and equipped for lifelong learning in our inclusive, welcoming and safe environment.

Vision Statement

At Gomeldon Primary School, we believe in learning for life and ensuring our children grow and develop a strong sense of self, respect and community. With communication and language being at the heart of our bespoke Early Years Curriculum and a carefully considered enabling environment, our youngest learners will have endless opportunities to communicate, collaborate and explore their ideas in order to build firm foundations for a life-long love of learning.

Intent

• To create a positive learning environment where our children feel that they belong. That they are happy, safe and know that they are cared for and an important part of, our school community.
• To support children in growing their capacity for self-regulation, tolerance and resilience alongside enabling development of self-belief, social confidence and positive mental-wellbeing.
• To promote learning experiences and opportunities that encourage our children to be active participants and independent in their own learning journey, through fostering personal growth of ‘characteristics of effective learning’ - Playing & Exploring, Active learning, Creating & Thinking Critically.
• To help each child recognise their own strengths, talents and potential, as well as developing confidence to take risks and experience making mistakes - within the safety of secure and trusted space and people.
• To empower our children through carefully planned for or facilitated learning opportunities, to develop effective communication and language skills by experiencing active listening; vocabulary development and the basic skills needed to ask their own questions, build knowledge around their personal interests and be curious about their personal landscape and wider the world around them.
• To understand and believe in, our school values of resilience, reflectiveness, resourcefulness and relationships.

Implementation

Using knowledge of the Early Years Foundation Stage Educational Programmes alongside a sound understanding of appropriate child development, children will have access to a range of carefully considered, stimulating, open-ended resources (inside and outside) with opportunities to independently engage in and explore all areas of learning. We advocate that learning does not just happen at school - we actively encourage families to share aspects of home life, special moments and areas of interest through our online learning journeys, which are accessible by school, parents and the children themselves.

Our curriculum gives high priority to the development of communication and language. Reception children will engage in a range of language rich experiences and opportunities that will give every child the ability to grow their linguistic capital and learn new skills and knowledge to support and facilitate their unique and personal development, regardless of starting point. Learning experiences and opportunities will evolve in approach over the course of the year; in response to different cohorts, identified needs, gaps and interests.

Our children will experience

• Child-led and initiated, independent ‘Discovery Time’ play
• Creative teaching interactions, utilising in-the-moment opportunities (when a need is identified then immediately addressed directly within the context of the child’s play or activity at that time)
• Intentional teaching experiences (when specific objectives are taken by adults into play situations)
• Whole class or group ‘guided’ teaching, for activities such as Phonics. 

Our bespoke EYFS curriculum co-operatively tones with our whole-school Golden Threads by enabling our children through working towards specific aspirations to prepare them for their next educational steps: Belong (Belonging) Be independent (Apprenticeship) Be curious (Curiosity)

Our curriculum goals have been carefully selected to allow children to showcase a wide range of independently applied skills and knowledge, from across a range of areas of learning; each ultimately evidencing multiple end-point Early Learning Goals. Milestone based ‘check-points’ towards curriculum goals are progressively planned and take into account developmental stages and steps to success. These milestones form the basis of ongoing assessment and careful monitoring and support of those not on-track. These carefully planned goals and milestones, mapped out across the Reception year, will help each child make progress towards these aspirations and achieve a Good Level of Development.

Impact

Children at Gomeldon Primary School will demonstrate the following, because of their Reception Year experience with us:

Belong: Our children will know they are an important member of our school community and will experience first-hand, what ‘collaboration’ means. They will be able to explain why we wear our uniform and know their house group and house colour. They will have learned class and school rules and routines and know why these are important for all, not just themselves. Our children will have quality conversations and be able to articulate and confidently share their thoughts and ideas knowing they will be valued and listened to. They will have friendships and positive relationships across the school, such as from our Year R & 6 ‘Buddies’ sessions and wider school interactions such as play times or House Group activities like Sports Day. They will understand the need to compromise with others and will have experienced negotiating in order to resolve problems or differences. Our children will take on the responsibility of looking after our classroom and school resources and will understand and model school values of resilience, reflectiveness, resourcefulness and relationships and be able to give their own examples of how they demonstrate these.

Be independent: Our children will be able to independently play, learn, demonstrate specific skills and use new and prior knowledge to solve problems. They will have their own ideas and plans and the innate confidence in their own ability, to set and achieve their own simple goals. They will know how to use tools and resources around them to help complete different tasks, or create and make what they need to realise their own ideas or plans. Our children will understand how to manage their own personal needs such as getting dressed and know ways to keep healthy and well. They will know ‘right’ from ‘wrong’ and will be able to make sensible choices considering risk, knowing how and when to seek help for themselves or others.

Be curious: Our children will ask questions and test what they are told and learn. They will know where they live and be able to say their address, but understand that there is a big beautiful world outside of our small school village and they will be excited by learning about different places. They will acknowledge and value similarity and difference, understanding that this is what makes us special. Our children will enjoy being outdoors and appreciate the natural world around them, believing that it is important to look after living things and our environment. They will independently explore and ‘notice’, using their observations in creative and considered ways. Children will know that things change over time and begin to spot examples of this. They will enjoy music and dance, and making and creating expressively. Children will start to understand that sometimes we do not know all the answers or that sometimes there is more than one answer or way of doing something, as they begin to experience the difference between information, opinion and belief.

Evidencing and assessment

 ‘Effective assessment takes place when children are taught well and can talk about what they know, demonstrating their learning and development in a range of contexts’

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile 2023 Handbook

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Handbook guidance on assessment as being;

• Practitioners using knowledge of the children
• Summative - based on a holistic view of the child
• Informed by a range of perspectives (including home)
• Inclusive for all including children with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) and children with English as an Additional Language (EAL)
• Underpinned by a broad curriculum and effective pedagogy

Children are able to demonstrate their understanding and knowledge in a range of ways, with supporting photographic evidence used when appropriate. Tapestry (online learning journal) is used by all members of the Early Years team and families at home to celebrate and ‘keep’ special moments of learning, as well as recording notable progress or key milestone-based evidence to support practitioner discussion and moderation.

Our progressive curriculum goal milestones will support us as we observe, monitor and track all children throughout the year towards achievement of goals and aspirations.

Each curriculum goal and progressive build-up of successfully achieved milestones will provide a multi-faceted, ‘holistic’ approach to completion of our statutory end of year profile assessment (EYFSP), reporting to parents and transitional discussions with the Year 1 teacher.

Curriculum milestones have been designed using the following documentation:

• Grenier, J. (2021) Working with the revised Early Years Foundation Stage: Principles into Practice
• Sharma, A. Cockerill, H & Sanctuary, L (2022) Mary Sheridan’s From Birth to Five Years (5^th edition)
• Department for Education (October 2022) Early Years Foundation Stage Profile 2023 Handbook
• Department for Education (July 2023 – effective 4 September 2023) Statutory framework for the early years: Setting the standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five

Enabling our children to make progress towards achieving curriculum goals and curriculum aspirations will provide our children with the skills and knowledge that will effectively set them up for transition into Year 1, National Curriculum and their learning beyond.

Any child found not to be ‘on-track’ will be supported through carefully considered instructional teaching interactions and activities, or supported more directly through specific and targeted intervention depending on identified need(s).