Our Early Years Foundation Stage

The development of language is at the very heart of our curriculum. Children are encouraged to develop their speech and communication skills through, songs, rhymes, high quality texts and our Early Years Practitioners skill-fully modelling and extending our children’s vocabulary through high quality interactions and planned learning opportunities.

Entwined in our language development is the development of early readers. Children are encouraged to become early readers through enjoyment of books, and the systematic teaching of phonics. Children follow the rigorous and successful ‘Teeny Reading Seeds’ within the Nursery and ‘Phonics International’ with our Reception classes, created by Debbie Hepplewhite.

Though our carefully planned central ideas and lines of inquiry our children develop a love of stories and internalise the language of storytelling, reflecting a breadth of cultures, families and world knowledge. Staff prioritise the importance of a ‘language rich’ environment by the use of songs, Makaton, nursery rhymes and providing time and space for high quality interactions between adults and children. Our Early Years Practitioners work tirelessly to ensure interactions are positive and progressive, whilst having fun! Ensuring pupils have the opportunities to flourish and gather words at pace in order to become confident communicators.

Across our EYFS phase our Early Years Practitioners carefully plan adult initiated learning opportunities as well as a carefully crafted learning environment that scaffolds and extends children’s learning, regardless of their starting points. These learning opportunities are flexible and responsive to the children’s needs and interests, so are adapted to follow the direction of the children within their play.

At LPPA, our learning environment is the third teacher, it is constantly evolving to cater for the interests of our pupils as well as to ensure they are challenged throughout their time in the EYFS. This warm, nurturing environment is pivotal in ensuring our pupils feel safe enough to risk take in their play and be open-minded to new experiences. This also helps to foster our children’s abilities to work collaboratively, sharing, turn-taking and working in a joint way for a specific goal.

At LPPA our Early Years Practitioners use a wealth of best practice information to support planning, curriculum, interventions as well as assessment for our pupils. This includes; Birth To Five Matters, Early Years Foundation Stage Framework, Development Matters and The Milestones Assessment Toolkit (MAT toolkit).

Our curriculum is designed and delivered to ensure that children, regardless of their starting points make good or better progress. We aim for the vast majority of our children to achieve GLD by the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage.
By the end of the EYFS phase our children will have developed these core learning behaviours:

• 1) Have confidence within their own abilities, being risk-takers in their play.
• 2) Have pride in their community, always striving to be their best.
• 3) Be confident communicators, both in writing and orally.
• 4) Be great mathematical thinkers, showing their understanding of maths in a range of different ways.
• 5) Be caring friends, who listen to others and take turns in play.
• 6) Be open-minded to new challenges, preserving when the learning gets challenging.
• 7) Be principled, understanding right and wrong and knowing how to communicate this appropriately.
• 8) Be inquirers, having a thirst for information about the modern world they live in.
• 9) Be knowledgeable about our planet, and how we care for it.
• 10) Be balanced, understanding the importance of keeping a healthy body and mind.
• 11) Be reflective, talking about their strengths in play and what they would like to do better.

Our EYFS pupils are assessed through the use of WOW moments in their play within our electronic learning journals and floorbooks.

Our EYFS Staff are skilled in using formative assessment to identify each child’s in the moment next steps, ensuring that these are actioned quickly to make the most of each learning moment.

At LPPA are Early Years Practitioners complete Baseline assessments on all pupils, identifying starting points for our pupils. These are then carefully tracked throughout the year at key points. Thus, enabling Early Years Practitioners, Subject Leads and our Senior Leadership Team to ensure rates of progress are at least good for all pupils, including those who may fall into a vulnerable group such as Summer Born pupils.