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Roskear Primary School

Roskear Primary and Nursery School

Learning together for a better future

About Reception

Welcome
 
Welcome to our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). This is the time in your child’s life between birth and age 5 and we think it is the most important stage of their development, as it helps your child become ‘school ready’ as well as preparing them for their future learning and successes.
 
We will support your child to be happy, active, inspired, feel safe and secure; and support their development, care and learning needs. In order for children to acquire a deep level of learning, it is important to ensure they have opportunities to build memory prompts, enabling them to recall things which they have learnt and effectively continuing to build their knowledge as they progress throughout education.

 Intent

In EYFS, our curriculum is designed to recognise children’s prior knowledge and learning, including from both their experiences at home and any previous setting. We work in partnership with parents, carers and other settings to provide the best possible start at Roskear Primary & Nursery School, ensuring each child can reach their full potential from their various starting points.

We want children to succeed through collaborative learning principles and working with others. As such, there is a strong emphasis on the Prime Areas of Learning: Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language, including oracy and Physical Development.

At Roskear, we recognise that oracy not only improves academic outcomes, but is a life skill to ensure success beyond school, in life and future employment. We want to develop children’s thinking and understanding, promote their self-confidence, resilience and empathy and support their well-being. Our enabling environments and highly skilful and nurturing adult interactions support the children as they begin to link learning to their play and exploration from the very moment they join us.

 

We provide an engaging curriculum which is sequential and maximises opportunities for meaningful cross-curricular links and learning experiences, as well as promoting the unique child by offering extended periods of play and opportunities for sustained thinking. Our curriculum consists of everything we want our children to experience, learn and be able to do. We provide opportunities to follow children’s interests and ideas to foster a lifelong love of learning. We ensure that their abilities and needs are at the forefront of our planning.

 By the end of the Reception year, our intent is to ensure that all children reach the Early Learning Goals and ensure that all children make at least good progress from their starting points. We also ensure that they are equipped with the skills and knowledge to make a smooth transition into Year 1.

 

Implementation

At Roskear we ensure that children experience the wonders of the world through the seven areas of learning. Through our rich, enabling and resourceful, indoor and outdoor, learning environments skilful practitioners are able to meet every child’s needs and follow their unique interests and fascinations.

While there are a number of priorities in relation to learning within the early years, at Roskear we consider communication and language (speaking, listening and understanding) to be at the very foundation of all we do and as such practitioners use strategies that are highly effective in the development of language skills, for example, through the use of commenting “I see you have built a tall tower, tell me about it”.

We recognise that children learn best through being provided first hand experiences and as such we ensure that all our children are given as many opportunities as possible to experience the things they are learning about.  For example, when learning about new life in spring we visited the local farm. Upon the children’s return or engagement in such activities, the practitioners ensure children are given the opportunity to use their new learning while transferring their basic skills e.g. making a book, using their reading skills to find out about the things they have seen.

Learning takes place through ‘child initiated’ and ‘adult led’ learning. Children are encouraged to access the learning enhancements through ‘continuous provision’ to consolidate all that they have been taught and to practice and apply them independently.

Impact

Practitioners have a secure knowledge and understanding of how children learn and what they know. Children are encouraged to demonstrate their knowledge through high levels of engagement and curiosity. Adults model expectations and positive attitudes to learning. By observing and listening to children, adults are able to review their progress and success. Taking into account children’s prior knowledge and achievements, staff plan their next steps to move learning forward. Parental involvement is highly valued across the EYFS and we recognise parents as the children’s first educators.

We are proud to report that last year 72% of our children left Reception (Foundation Stage 2) having achieved a ‘good level of development’ – this was in-line with the National data and 2% higher than the local authority average.