Intent

At Frederick Bird Primary School, we believe that our Early Years Foundation Stage is crucial to developing firm foundations. 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.

The curriculum is everything that the children do which is both planned and unplanned, including the attitudes for learning. We aim for our children to become critical thinkers who can work independently and show a high level of resilience. There are 7 areas of learning in the Development Matters for the Early Years Foundation Stage.

The Prime Areas:-

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

The Specific Areas:-

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts

Implementation

We implement these areas of learning by providing a safe, stimulating environment that allows children to discover, be challenged, consolidate, and achieve their very best whilst developing their resilience and independence. The teaching of these areas of learning is practical and playful with support and challenge from adults in class sessions, small group sessions and working with individuals. There is a combination of adult-led, teacher taught sessions as well as a wealth of stimulating continuous provision opportunities. Throughout all these areas of learning and at the heart of the EYFS Curriculum are the “Characteristics of Effective Learning”.

Through a play-based approach, we focus on the development of knowledge and skills through exploration and investigation of children’s interests. We do this through ‘Project work’. This is alongside high-quality teaching to ensure that all children make good or better progress regardless of their individual starting points. We begin each new year by looking at the individual needs of our children, we then carefully develop our flexible EYFS Curriculum which enables them to follow the path of their learning journey.

Project Work

Project work presents many opportunities for the children at Frederick Bird Primary School. We ensure the children’s ideas are respected, their creativity is encouraged, their interests are fostered, whilst we ensure the skills they need to develop are met. It helps encourage children’s curiosity and engages them to think and create critically as the topic is relevant to them.
The projects emerge from the question’s children ask and develop according to their interests.
It gives children the chance to practice problem solving and critical thinking. Children gain confidence in themselves and their abilities.

Accurate assessment informs our planning to ensure it builds on their next steps in learning and supports the development of new skills and knowledge. We ensure learning is embedded and consistent and that all children continue to make the best possible progress within our EYFS setting.

Take a look at the example of the project work that Miss Phelan carried out with the children.

Impact

The impact of our provision can be seen through the progress each individual child makes, feedback received by our parents and the happy, caring, risk taking learners that the children become. We know that the Early Years Foundation Stage is such an important stage in our children’s development and all the team ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for our children.