Early Years
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) encompasses a child’s development from birth to the end of their first year at school.
During their time in our Pre School and Reception class, the emphasis is on play-based, active learning which lays the foundations for the rest of your child’s educational journey. We use an approach called ‘The Curiosity Approach’ to offer a familiar home from home feel to our learning environment and resources. Real and familiar items are used in place of bright coloured plastic items. Real furniture and items are used in the setting rather than toy specific, bright plastic items. This evokes children’s curiosity and they learn far more about limitations and creative uses for everyday things.
Neroche’s EYFS curriculum shows clear progression within each of the 7 areas.
All children are carefully assessed against each area and work towards achieving a Good Level of Development which means they have achieved each of the 3 Prime areas and Literacy and Maths at the end of their Reception year.
The Areas of Learning
There are 7 areas of learning in the EYFS curriculum split into Prime and Specific areas with a total combined 17 assessment points across the 7 areas.
There are 3 Prime Areas. These are particularly important for building a foundation for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, forming relationships and thriving.
The 3 Prime Areas are known as:
Communication and language; Physical development and Personal, and Social and emotional development
There are 4 Specific Areas. These ensure the three prime areas are strengthened and applied.
The 4 Specific Areas are known as:
Literacy; Mathematics; Understanding the world and Expressive arts and design.
The Characteristics of Effective Learning
Alongside the 7 areas of learning, the EYFS curriculum aims to develop key effective learning characteristics for each child. These characteristics are defined as:
Playing and Exploring (including engaging with learning)
Our EYFS children are actively encouraged to find out and explore their environment. Activities are carefully designed so they are willing to try something new and have a go and have opportunities to play with resources that they are familiar with.
Active Learning (including motivation)
If a child is an active learner they are continuously trying new things and engaging with the learning environment they are in. They get invovled with wht is going on around them and concentrate on activities. They show enjoyment for what they are doing and enjoy the success when they have reach the outcome that they set out to achieve.
Creating and Thinking Critically
Through engaging with play based learning children are encourgaed to develop their own ideas and are able to choose or select ways in which they want to do things. They make links and connections between contexts and scenarios .
Parent Partnership in the EYFS
We use Tapestry to communicate with parents and share children’s achievements and learning journeys.
Parents are encouraged to upload observations from home so school staff are able to build a picture of the whole child and can plan to meet needs accordingly.
For more information, please see our Trust EYFS Statement and our Neroche EYFS Statement.
Phonics
Read Write Inc
Early reading starts with phonics.
At Neroche, we use Read Write Inc as a Government approved systematic phonics program.
Children are taught phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (visual representations using letters). They are taught single phonemes and then taught to blend single sounds together to be able to read words. Children only have reading books when they can decode the sounds that they have learnt and then books are carefully matched to their decode ability. Over time and as their repertoire of phonemes increases the complexity of reading book/text increases until they are a fluent decoder.
Read Write Inc have produced some useful parent tutorials so parents can learn all about how to support their child as they learn with Read Write Inc. Phonics. the tutorials provide detailed ideas and advice on pronouncing pure sounds, blending, and digraphs (where a sound/phoneme is made up of 2 letters e.g ay)
Parents are able to access practice sheets at home if they want to learn more about individual sounds/phonemes and the associated letter formation. Click on the image to access these resources.