EYFS

Intent

At Blessed Sacrament we place great value on the development of children as individuals and providing them with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to prepare them for the challenges beyond. Our aim in the EYFS is to build strong foundations and resilience, so that they can grow to become successful, life-long learners and members of society. 

Our curriculum is the cultural capital we know our pupils need so that they can gain the knowledge, skills and understanding they require for success. We support them to develop effective learning habits through the Characteristics of Effective Learning: Play and Exploration, Active Learning and Creative and Critical Thinking. 

We support our children in developing the skills needed in order to learn to listen, speak and meet the high expectations for behaviour by working together and aiming for excellence. Personal, social and emotional development and communication and language are curriculum areas which are prioritised. In our settings the children experience an enabling environment which is warm and supportive. This in turn supports the children to begin to link learning to their play and exploration through our holistic provision.

As a team we work extremely hard to create an indoor and outdoor learning environment that inspires the children to investigate, question and challenge themselves. The children can explore the different areas throughout the day and access a wide range of continuous provision opportunities incorporating sensory, physical, writing, number work and creative role play activities.

We want to provide our children with every opportunity to fulfill their potential and work on reaching the Early Learning Goals at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage and ensure that the children make, at least, good progress from their initial starting points.

With the incremental challenge the children face as they move into KS1 it is important we support this transition by ensuring our children leave us ready and excited to take on new challenges. We actively support our children throughout their final term in Reception with transition opportunities to aid their move into KS1.

Implementation

Our children learn through their engagement with a range of learning opportunities which are made up of a balanced initiative of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. A typical day is structured around the provision of extensive opportunities for children to develop their learning and skills in PSED and Communication and Language. The provision within the setting delivers challenging experiences which support the development of the children. The EYFS curriculum is accessible both indoors and outdoors. The provision is designed in a cross-curricular manner which supports holistic learning and development including understanding the world and expressive art and design as well as to promote sustained thinking and active learning. Our planning is child-led with our experienced staff ensuring that our children's next steps and individual stages of development are incorporated. By implementing our planning, assessing, and observation cycle in this way we are able to ensure that the children have ownership over their environment and learning.

Our inclusive approach to curriculum delivery ensures that all children are able to fully participate and learn alongside one another. It also enables our practitioners to support the children's learning by identifying their zone of proximal development and furthermore, scaffolding their learning.

Impact

The EYFS curriculum is centred on the needs of the children, inclusive of disadvantaged children and those with SEND. All children are observed and their learning evaluated via talking to children, looking at their achievements, observing their learning experiences and analysing data and progress by age, gender, and group. Every member of staff uses ongoing observational assessment to identify children’s starting points and plan experiences which ensure progress. This information is tracked which enables us to measure our starting points against a national data set.    We use this information on a regular basis to plan learning experiences and next steps. 

During each assessment period, we are able to update the progress children have made onto our tracking software which allows us to assess the impact of our provision and evaluate whether it has been enough.   Evidence of children’s learning including observations, work samples, photographs and contributions from parents are kept in ‘work books’.

Our curriculum and its delivery ensure that children make good progress. During their time in our EYFS, children make rapid progress towards their age-related expectations before transitioning.  Our high standards of progress and achievement are driven by an enriched curriculum, enabling environment, and rigorous assessment processes.

The impact of our curriculum can be measured by the way in which our children are inspired and excited about their learning. We work hard to ensure our children develop into confident and curious learners, who are excited by new challenges and not put off by difficulty. We endeavour to ensure that our children leave the EYFS ready to move with confidence into KS1 and their lifelong learning journey