EYFS – Silverdale, Ribblesdale, Swaledale and Malhamdale
EYFS@RMS Curriculum
Here at EYFS@RMS, we use the national statutory and non-statutory guidance available to plan our exciting, age-appropriate curriculum.
We also use these documents to check regularly our children are on track for achieving their age-related learning, plan children’s individual next steps and to assess our outcomes. These documents are available to view at the bottom of the page.
However, our curriculum is much richer and more personal to our children at our school. Each range of Nursery to Reception is planned and provided for distinctly.
In a daily and weekly context, our curriculum is driven using the children’s own lines of enquiry, context, culture, engagement level and needs.
Our curriculum planning incorporates seasonal changes and also celebrations from across our wonderfully diverse global communities.
We include daily deliberate practice of early reading, writing and number dexterity.
Our continuous provision reflects our planned, sequential learning intent and facilitates the children’s next steps.
It also excites and enables independent learning, language and communication.
We want to maximise our children’s Understanding of the World and provide them with a rich vocabulary in which to describe what they know, what they are learning and what they can do.
We enhance our curriculum with visits and visitors.
Our curriculum is aligned with the whole school termly themes and the curriculum subject vertical progression knowledge strands have been mapped from our earliest Nursery stage to Year 6.
All of our adults, including parents and carers, know the intent behind our weekly, half termly and termly curriculum.
Our rich EYFS curriculum content is underpinned by our practitioners continually reflecting on the different rates at which children develop, the different prior experiences they have and adjusting our practice appropriately.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure all children can access equally exactly the same essential foundation knowledge and experiences so they can flourish.
We display our weekly ‘sticky knowledge’ so as our learning journeys forward, we can look retrieve our previous learning to enable us to remember more, to know more and do more.
EYFS@RMS Curriculum Intent
Our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Curriculum
Intent:
We have the highest expectations of ourselves as the practitioners within our setting and seek to cultivate the best possible education for the children in our care. We aim ‘for all’ children to be given an ambitious, rich and sequential curriculum which ignites their imagination and curiosity, enhances all children’s life experiences and provides a firm foundation for assured future success, where children continue to ‘do all the good they can’.
Our aims, as detailed in the Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage, are as follows:
- quality and consistency, so that every child makes good progress, or better and no child gets left behind .
- a secure foundation through sequential planning for the learning and development of each individual child, and assessing and reviewing what they have learned regularly.
- partnership working between practitioners and with parents and/or carers.
- equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported.
- All children healthy, happy and safe.
Four guiding principles will shape our practice in early years.
These are:
- every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured
- children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
- children learn and develop well in safe enabling environments with teaching and support from highly qualified adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners, parents and carers.
- the importance of learning and development. Children develop and learn at different rates.
Implementation:
Our Foundation Stage provision, both inside and outside reflects the seven areas of learning taken from the Early Years Foundation Stage profile. Three areas are particularly important for building a foundation for all learning so children can ‘do all the good they can’ at all times.
Our Relationships and Health Curriculum underpins all aspects of learning.
These are the prime areas:
- communication and language
- physical development
- personal, social and emotional development
We also support children in four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied.
The specific areas are:
- literacy
- mathematics
- understanding the world
- expressive arts and design
We reflect on the different rates at which children are developing and adjust our practice appropriately. Our assessment is integral to learning. Each child is unique and therefor has their own starting point and next steps. We know where we expect each child to be in their learning each half term. We work hard to ensure no child is left behind.
We encourage and model the skills children need to be effective, life-long learners.
The characteristics of effective teaching and learning we encourage and model are:
- playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
- active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
- creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things
We use the Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage document and the non-statutory guidance within Development Matters and Birth to Five Matters documents. However, our curriculum is much richer and more personal to our children at our school. In a daily and weekly context, it is driven by the children’s own lines of enquiry, context, culture, engagement level and needs. Our curriculum planning incorporates seasonal changes and also celebrations from across our wonderfully diverse global communities. We want to maximise our children’s Understanding of the World and provide them with a rich vocabulary in which to describe what they remember, learn and can do going forward. Our curriculum is aligned with the whole school termly themes and the curriculum subject vertical progression knowledge strands have been mapped from our Nursery stage to Year 6. All of our rich EYFS curriculum content is underpinned by our practitioners continually reflecting on the different rates at which children develop and adjusting our practice appropriately.
Throughout school, we encourage children to be ‘Ready, Mutually Respectful and Safe’ to maximise their learning opportunities and develop self-regulation, an understanding of how to keep themselves and others healthy and safe and the ability to develop positive relationships, both now and for the future. In EYFS, our philosophy means we complement our pre planned curriculum with ‘planning in the moment’ working with and inspiring children to seek new challenge opportunities through exploration of their environment, using open ended resources. This enables us to provide a bespoke learning experience. We subscribe to the ‘loose parts’ philosophy of open ended outcome provision resourcing. If a child expresses an interest in an aspect of provision we do not have available, it is immediately made available as soon as possible. We believe we are facilitators, interacting and scaffolding. We increase children’s experiences of diversity, language, communication, reading and writing, culminating in optimum outcomes ‘for all’. We ensure children’s experiences over time are consistently and coherently arranged to build cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for their future learning.
Impact:
The impact of the curriculum on what children know, can remember and do is highly effective. Children demonstrate this through being deeply engaged in their work and play and sustaining high levels of concentration. All of our children, regardless of starting points, do well. Children with SEND achieve the best possible outcomes.
Our children are always ready to have a go and to persist, embracing challenge as part of active learning. The children have and understand the need for manners, honesty and respect. They are kind, caring and considerate towards others. They are ‘Ready, Mutually Respectful and Safe’. They listen and enjoy stories, rhymes and singing. They understand mathematical concepts and are secure in the mathematical foundation knowledge that they need to build future learning on. Children’s experiences over time are developed sequentially to build sufficient and secure knowledge and skills for children’s future learning. As they enter Year 1, they are ready and have encountered a broad and balanced set of experiences. All children leave our setting ready and equipped for the next stage of their learning journey. Children become confident communicators and fluent readers, consistently using new vocabulary. They can hold thoughtful conversations with adults and their friends. They can build meaningful relationships. They speak with increasing confidence and prosody. The children become fluent readers and develop a lifelong love of reading.
As they finish their Foundation Year in RMS, ‘all’ children are inspired to continue to ‘do all the good they can’.
Learning Journeys
Our curriculum planning encompasses, and is formed by: the children’s interests, appropriate language rich texts and the EYFS curriculum. Although all 17 areas of our EYFS curriculum are taught weekly, we focus on particular areas of the EYFS profile for a week or two weeks in line with the National Curriculum subject blocking throughout school. In this way, our whole school curriculum is sequentially planned and taught. Our yearly planning follows Seasons and Celebrations, as we investigate the world around us and particularly develop our own cultural capital here in Richmond, Yorkshire. We use NCTEM, Mastering Number and Mastering the Curriculum for the structure of our Mathematical teaching sequences with the aim of achieving mastery and deep conceptual understanding. We follow Little Wandle Letters and Sounds for our phonics teaching and learning. Our R.E. Curriculum is taught in line with the rest of our whole school R.E. planning. We follow the North Yorkshire Agreed Syllabus, the Understanding Christianity blocks and use R.E. Today resources. As the rest of the school, we work towards the promotion of our whole school half termly Christian Value focus. In our P.S.H.E, we work within over-arching themes for each half term. We term this our ‘Preventative PSHE Curriculum’ as it teaches children to know how to make good choices, keeping themselves safe and well in all aspects of their lives. We can also flexibly meet children’s immediate personal and social educational needs daily and weekly, thus maximising continuing development in this area. We term the latter, our ‘Responsive curriculum’.
Retrieval Strategy in EYFS
We use our visual reminders on our learning journey wall displays to reinforce previous learning and make connections with the new sticky knowledge we are teaching. Sticky knowledge we have previously visited is evident in our Continuous Provision. In addition, at the end of free-flow sessions, we have a ‘Show and Tell’ opportunity for children who have been engaged in child initiated learning, to share what they have found out with their classmates.
Learning Journeys – Our Sticky Knowledge
EYFS@RMS Curriculum Planning Summer
EYFS@RMS Curriculum Planning Spring
2023 – 2024
2022 – 2023
EYFS@RMS Curriculum Planning Autumn
Three characteristics of effective teaching and learning are:
- playing and exploring – where children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
- active learning – where children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
- creating and thinking critically – where children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things
Our EYFS@RMS curriculum is planned both ahead, in a timely and sequential manner but also ‘in the moment’, to maximise equal learning opportunities ‘for all’.
What is ‘In the Moment Planning’?
In the moment planning is an approach where we as an early years setting develop a mini topic or extension of an existing theme spontaneously based on what a child is interested in ‘in that moment’. Planning in the moment runs alongside and complements our sequentially pre-planned curriculum as it enhances engagement and therefore learning opportunities. It utilises our positive relationships and skills as EYFS practitioners to identify each child’s next step and effectively interact with our children to promote the best outcomes. It ensures we provide a bespoke curriculum for each and every individual child.
Environment
We plan the children’s continuous provision to match the children’s next steps as identified by our whole team. Our environment stimulates engagement in learning and enables each and every child to access activities both without being directed by an adult and whilst working with an adult, equally. The activities therefore have a balance of closed and open outcomes. We believe in low threshold and high ceiling learning. Our provision is characterised by natural and open-ended resources to ignite imagination and creativity. It is planned according to our curriculum intent for the week and enables our planned outcomes. Each activity area is equipped with all necessary provision that allows our children to learn or practice a new skill, depending on the age range and requirements of the children in each indoor or outdoor classroom. It enables curiosity, investigation on a small or large scale, alone or together, in quiet or busy play.
Observation, Positive Relationships and Interaction
In addition to our carefully planned teaching inputs, children are enabled to choose their own lines of enquiry through play in our engaging and curriculum linked continuous provision. Rather than always stepping in to direct children towards an activity, we strike a balance of observation and interaction. Judging situations is what we do best. We might observe the child(ren) closely and follow their lead initially. We then aim to match the level of scaffold we provide to each child’s individual developmental journey. We might narrate what we see to facilitate language skills. We may work with the children on an activity towards a clear outcome or sometimes, a broad range of outcomes. If or when we do join the children’s play, we make sure we display curiosity, awe, wonder and enthusiasm in what they are doing and engage them with thinking models such as ‘I wonder…’, ‘I’ve noticed…’ or when appropriate, open-ended questions, all of which promote thinking and discussion, rich in new vocabulary and reasoning. We model behaviour, both in appropriate listening and responses but we also continually reference in every interaction our ‘Ready, Mutually Respectful and Safe’ ethos.
Next Steps
We aim to identify when there is a teaching opportunity so we can gently join the play and increase learning, tailored to that child’s next step of development. We seek to do this through open questioning, narration of processes, modelling of thinking and enabling positive outcomes for the child. We also know when to stand back and observe, allowing the child to discover their own chosen learning path and come to conclusions themselves. Nurturing a child’s lifelong love of learning is core to everything we do and we encourage resilience at every opportunity.
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