Intent

Our Early Years Curriculum provides all children with opportunities and experiences to develop positive relationships and attitudes, be resilient, capable, confident and self assured and able to succeed as learners.

It has been designed to create broad and balanced experiences which are tailored to the needs and interests of our children and the wider community.

Our main focus is to develop the children's speech and language through early reading skills and phonics.

We provide high quality learning experiences through adult led and child initiated activities which engage and challenge each individual.

Implementation

All our staff have high expectations and through a well resourced and stimulating environment ensure the best for every child.  We encourage our children to become independent and active learners through challenging activities and experiences.  

High quality teaching and learning is centered around the children's individual needs and interests providing the building blocks for the wider whole school curriculum.

Our curriculum provision develops speech and language skills to enable children to become confident speakers.  We foster a love of reading through exposure to a variety of quality texts and genres.  Our children have access to story times, nursery rhyme time, guided reading, home readers and individual reading time.

Our mathematics curriculum is taught through exploration of number, shape and measures in the environment and through real life scenarios, experiences and routines.

We build strong partnerships with parents and carers, engaging and enabling them to support their child's learning, development and well-being.  We do this through Class Dojo, parent workshops, stay and play sessions, parents evening, information leaflets, twitter and class page on school website.

Impact

Children enjoy, engage and participate enthusiastically in their learning.  They will develop into confident, motivated and independent learners.

Our children experience a smooth transition between Nursery and Reception as the EYFS unit works together collaboratively to ensure they leave the Early Years with a firm foundation for their learning.

We use floor books supplemented with exercise books in Reception for Literacy and Mathematics, which share their successes and achievements.  Our team interact and observe the children's learning in order to inform interests which feed into planning, next steps and assessment.

Welcome to Early Years at St Luke's

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

This is based around four themes, each of which is embraced and reflected in our broad and balanced curriculum.

A Unique Child

Every child is a unique child who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self assured.

Positive Relationships

Children learn to be strong and independent through the development of positive relationships with parents, carers, teachers and teaching assistants.

Enabling Environments

The environment plays a key role in developing, supporting and extending children's development and learning, with adults responding to the children's individual interests and needs, to help build their learning over time.

Learning and Development

Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates and all areas of learning and development are equally important and interconnected.  The framework covers the education and care of all children in Early Years provision, including children with special educational needs and disabilities.

EYFS Curriculum

Prime Areas

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Communication and Language
• Physical Development

Specific Areas

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

The teachers in Reception and Nursery use the bespoke St. Luke's curriculum end points at the end of each half term to assess the children's learning.  They make a judgement using what they know about the children, think about their interests and look at key events in the calendar to create an overview for the next half term's curriculum aims.  They aim to move the children's leaning on from the point they reached the term before.   

Here is some information about the end of Reception assessment using the ELG's (Early Learning Goals)

WellComm Speech and Language Toolkit

What is WellComm? 

 WellComm is a Speech and Language Toolkit for Screening and Intervention in the Early Years: Revised Edition that plays a crucial role in identifying children with potential language difficulties and offers a range of customised intervention activities to help support their language development.

Easy to administer and score, the screening tool uses a unique traffic light system to help practitioners understand the child’s current level of speech and language and to provide a pathway for action, ensuring every child gets the support they need.

The WellComm system is:

• An approach that operates in partnership with parents.
• A means of tracking the progress of all children in the class, regardless of ability.
• The opportunity to identify areas of concern in language, communication and interaction development, in order to ensure targeted early intervention.
• An array of resources enabling delivery of focused activities to
  • target those children who have some language difficulties,
  • enhance the skills of all children and
  • increase the number of children whose language, communication and interaction development is within the expected range for the age group.
• A means of monitoring the success of the strategies the school uses to enhance communication skills.
• An assessment that can be used at different stages of the child’s development to understand progress.
• A diagnostic tool to enable school professionals to advise parents should the need arise for external help and support (such as speech and language therapists)
• A range of fun and play-based activities to address children’s language needs.
• A means of collaborative working

How does it work?

Every child is assessed for around 10 – 15 minutes on their understanding of what is being said to them (receptive language) and also how they communicate verbally (expressive  language). This assessment is partly completed through the everyday observations that your child’s teacher carries out in class to assess his/her progress throughout the whole of the Early Years curriculum. But also involves few targeted questions such as asking your child to point out various pictures or follow some easy instructions.

Each child’s own pace and concentration span is taken into consideration and the overall assessment may be done in several stages. However, we find that most children enjoy being asked the questions in WellComm and the activities we set for them as a follow up.

WellComm Activities

Oral Health

In Early Years we promote good oral health habits to teach our children the importance of looking after their teeth and establishing good oral health routines.

Across Nursery and Reception we take part in The Brush Bus. This is a supervised toothbrushing programme. The children brush their teeth every day in school. In Reception we brush our teeth when we come in from Lunchtime. We brush them for 2 minutes using a pea sized amount of toothpaste. To help us brush we use a range of toothbrushing songs on YouTube.

Here are some very simple messages that you can use to help promote good oral health at home:

• Brush your teeth twice a day for two minutes with a fluoride toothpaste, once before bed and one other time during the day.
• Eat less sugary food and drink - find out more at dentalhealth.org
• Visit your dentist regularly. Book a visit to the dentist once your child gets their first tooth and regularly

For ideas for 2 minute toothbrushing songs search Google. We have used Encanto and Sonic 2 minute timers so far!

Useful websites

RBA - Reception Baseline Assessment

The RBA - Reception Baseline Assessment is a statutory assessment. It is an activity based assessment of pupils' starting points in language, communication and literacy and mathematics. It is to be completed in the first six weeks of your child starting school. 

It is a short task-based assessment. Pupils use practical resources to complete these tasks and teachers record the results on a laptop, computer or tablet. 

Mrs Green and Mrs Fisher will be carrying out these assessments with your child on a one to one basis.

Parents as Partners

According to the Early Years Foundation Stage framework, a partnership includes

'parents, families and practitioners working together to benefit children.'

Parent feedback

"This workshop has been amazing for us as parents to learn how we can help our children.  Thank you for all that you do."

"Very well presented, teachers were very clear and honest on what is expected and how we as parents play a part."

"Thank you for sharing wonderful tips which help our children to learn."

Parent feedback

"It was a nice experience to be able to come and see how my sister is developing in her Nursery class in terms of her playing and be able to cooperate with all the different teachers and pupils.  It was also nice being able to see how all the teachers are able to handle all the children in a fun manner."

"Such a lovely experience, staff are very friendly, warm and welcoming.  Its always great to have an idea of what our children do at school.  Thank you for letting us stay and play."

"Absolutely loved every minute.  The children are clearly enjoying themselves and learning at the same time.  The staff are doing a wonderful job.  Thank you so much for having us today."