Welcome to Team EYFS

Our Nursery staff are: Mrs Geaves, Mrs Sibly, Mrs Ford, Miss Summersgill and Mrs Jennings.

Our Reception staff are: Miss Williams, Miss Monehen and Miss Bryan.

We believe that The Early Years Foundation Stage is crucial in securing firm foundations that children can continue to build upon. Children learn and develop at a faster rate from birth to five years old than at any
other time in their lives, so their experiences in early years have a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe, and happy childhood is important in its own right.

 It is our intent that the children who enter our EYFS develop physically, verbally, cognitively and emotionally whilst embedding a positive attitude to school and learning. We believe that all children deserve to be valued as an individual and we are passionate in allowing all children to develop their full, unique potential. With this in mind, we begin each new school year by looking at the individual needs of our children and, taking into account their different starting points, we then carefully develop our flexible EYFS Curriculum, which enables them to follow the path of their learning journey at a point that is suitable for their unique needs and stage of development.

Our Curriculum

Our curriculum is broad and balanced, encompassing key life skills, experiences and expectations. In response to the 2017 ‘Bold Beginnings’ report and the revised 2021 Development Matters and EYFS Framework, we have taken the opportunity to revisit, reflect upon and share our expectations for a quality reception year, encompassing our Trust values, and collective experience – along with a realignment of the core principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage:

These principles are:

  • every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured
  • children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships
  • children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers
  • children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates  

Whilst some aspects of our ‘Trust Ready’ curriculum are academically challenging, we fully embed and ‘live’ the three characteristics of effective teaching and learning of:

  • playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
  • active learning – children concentrate, keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
  • creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.  

Our curriculum enables the children to develop skills in all 7 areas;

-Communication and language

-Physical development

-Personal, Social and emotional development

-Literacy

-Mathematics

-Understanding the world

-Expressive arts and design

Communication and language skills underpin all that we do, we ensure that our provision is rich in text and provides all children with opportunities to talk, learn and understand language. We use stories as our teaching focus to allow us to develop.

Positive, Effective Partnerships.

We believe in strong partnerships between staff, children, parents/carers and the wider community. We have effective relationships with private child-care settings, our school nursing team, speech & language therapists and many other external providers.

We provide many opportunities for parents/carers to be involved in their child’s learning at home and at school. We value parents/carers knowledge and understanding about their children and work together to make sure every child reaches their full learning potential. 

Look out for some new pictures on our Class Dojo as the children explore their learning environment! We use Class Dojo as a way of sharing successes with parents and carers. It is also used for parents and carers to share with us the wonderful things the children have been doing out of school too! We are so very proud of all of our children and we love to celebrate their achievements whether it be learning to fasten their own coat, ride a bike or scooter outdoors or be able to create a masterpiece in the creative area!

Our children will grow and develop significantly over their time in EYFS; it truly is a wonderful journey to be part of.

Nursery Curriculum (Pending)
Reception Curriculum (Pending)

Phonics

As a school we follow Little Wandle letters and sounds revised as our chosen phonics scheme. Little Wandle is a secure, systematic progression in phonics learning.

In Nursery, we follow Foundations for Phonics which focuses on sounds, Nursery Rhymes and oral blending (using the sounds to make words).

In Reception, we begin teaching graphemes and reading decodable words. We host a Parent Phonics meeting in Autumn term to provide further information.

Little Wandle Parent’s Information

Maths

In Nursery, we follow Master the Curriculum and take inspiration from Karen Wilding and her approach to Early Maths.

In Reception, we follow White Rose Hub and Numbersense for our Maths scheme of learning. White Rose Hub allows us to create lessons that incorporate key mathematical concepts which can be revisited and developed further across the year.

Lingfield Education Trust

We work closely with the other Trust schools and their Early Years Staff to ensure that we are clear in our expectations for the children in the Trust.

For further information on ‘What to expect in the EYFS’ please click here.