Our Early Years Curriculum

“Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to fulfil their potential…experiences between birth and five has a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right. Good parenting and high quality learning together provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up”.

Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Curriculum Design 

Our Early Years curriculum is designed to provide all children with the opportunities and experiences that they need in order to develop positive dispositions and attitudes to be able to succeed as learners and in life. We have worked hard on our curriculum to ensure that it is the best it possibly can be, and is progressive, ensuring the children are continually building on top of their knowledge and skills. 

Four overarching principles guide and shape our practice: 

• The unique child - we recognise that every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
• Relationships - we recognise that children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships 
• The environment - we recognise that children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. We know that children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
•  Importance of learning and development - we recognise that children develop and learn at different rates. 

In order to construct a thorough and effective curriculum, we considered a range of guidance and literature. 

We have successfully used Development Matters as a guide to enable us to not only meet the requirements of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, but also to help create an effective Early Years Curriculum that builds on the strengths of the children and meets their needs. EEF research supports our approach, specifically relating to the prioritisation of communication and language. Above all else, we put the child at the heart of everything we do and pride ourselves on our child-centred curriculum. Children's interests are of utmost importance to us - the individual child remains at the centre of our practice and we explore individual and collective interests continually. We value the notion that young children are experts in their own lives and as such are co-constructors of their learning alongside skilled adults. We utilise The Characteristics of Effective Learning and therefore prioritise encouraging curiosity, energy and enthusiasm from the children. We recognise that understanding how children learn has huge potential to transform early years practice and empower children as confident, creative life-long learners

We have worked hard to ensure that our curriculum is progressive from the very start of our EYFS provision (the 2Y Room) throughout to reception. Our topics are mapped out on our Long Term Plan, with a more detailed Medium Term Plan for each half term. Our plans detail the focus high quality texts that the children will focus on, as well as the key vocabulary. The plans also detail the learning opportunities and the provision, both indoor and outdoor.

We appreciate that the children need to be secure in the three prime areas before they can fully access the specific areas. 

The Three Prime Areas

1. Communication and Language

At Springwell Park, we prioritise the development of our children's communication and language skills and it therefore underpins all seven key areas of learning. We recognise that the number of language rich conversations children have with adults and their peers throughout the day is crucial. Our practitioners work hard to increase our children's vocabulary by engaging with children about their interests and echoing back with added vocabulary and expression. When topics are planned, key vocabulary is sought out and introduced for the different themes and interests and this language is modelled to the children and around the environment. 

The environment within our provision develops communication and language due to it being language rich with a love of literature and storytelling being of utmost importance. Each area of Early Years has key high quality texts mapped out and storytelling is prioritised. Our children encounter familiar fairy tales and nursery rhymes and pre-selected poetry from our poetry spine - the children are then given extensive opportunities to use and embed the new range of words in various contexts. 

In order to accelerate progress, our nursery children use WellComm Intervention and reception use NELI. The practitioners are highly skilled and trained and progress is monitored and tracked. 

2. Personal, Social, and Emotional Development 

We appreciate and recognise that children's personal, social, and emotional development is crucial for children to lead happy and healthy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. We pride ourselves on our strong and thorough relationships, relationships that are rooted in mutual respect between the pupils, practitioners, and parents - relationships that are strengthened through our Key Worker approach. Through well thought out and planned topics, our children are taught and supported to manage their emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set themselves simple goals, and have confidence in their own abilities - PSED activities linked to each topic are detailed on our medium term plans. The children are taught how to look after their own bodies, how to manage their own feelings, and personal hygiene. The children also learn, through supported interaction with other children, how to share, how to make positive relationships with their peers, and how to resolve conflicts effectively. 

Our whole school PSHE curriculum also helps develop our children's PSED. Key focus days and activities are planned out throughout the year - please refer to our PSHE page for further information. 

3. Physical Development 

We recognise that physical activity is vital for children's all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. We pride ourselves on our fine and gross motor skills opportunities right throughout our Early Years provision - starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child's strength, co-ordination and positional awareness. Our gross and fine motor skill activities are planned out on our Medium Term Plans, with indoor and outdoor provision - we work  hard to develop our children's core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility.

We are very proud of our fine motor skills opportunities, and we appreciate this is the starting point of our children's writing journey with

repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, where we allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence. Our children also have weekly PE sessions, where the children focus on physical development and gross motor skills. 

The Four Specific Areas

4. Literacy - Reading

We appreciate that reading consists of two dimensions - word reading and comprehension. We pride ourselves on our approach to reading from Early Years and right throughout the school. We aim for a clear balance between decoding and comprehension and we firmly believe our curriculum enables this.

Word-reading - We follow Read Write Inc at Springwell park and pride ourselves on the fidelity we show to the programme. Our children start their Read Write Inc journey from our 2Y room, where throughout their time there and in nursery, they focus on creating and developing a language rich environment, where they put high quality stories, nursery rhymes and fairy tales at the heart of everything they do. The focus is very much on increasing our children's vocabulary and love of literature. Our nursery 2 (pre-school) children are introduced to Read Write Inc in Summer term (if developmentally appropriate). The children are introduced to the single sounds and the rhyming phrases, as well as the pure sounds - this helps with the transition to reception. 

Our reception children start their Read Write Inc journey from the very start of the year in September. Showing full fidelity to the programme, the children encounter whole class single sound speed sessions followed by small group letter formation in the afternoons. The children are then assessed and grouped accordingly. We pride ourselves on how we monitor progress and we work hard to ensure that no child is left behind - the Reading Leader keeps track of progression and interventions are put into place to help catch children up. The children are able to consolidate their reading knowledge with their phonetically decodable book that is matched to their ability - this book goes home with the children, alongside the matching Book-Bag book and a reading for pleasure text. 

Comprehension - Our approach to the teaching of comprehension truly does start in Early Years. From the 2Y room, storytelling and book-talk plays a huge part in our daily sessions and the practitioners work hard to increase our children's understanding and comprehension of what has been read. The high quality stories that the children focus on are taken from our Long Term Plan - we have ensured the choices are of high quality and contain superb language. Practitioners work hard with carefully thought out activities, such as engaging in 'You Choose' texts, where the children would develop their skimming and scanning technique as well as comprehension - this occurs through carefully phrased questioning to push the children's learning and understanding on.

Another example of the high quality comprehension provision would be through our selection of comprehension related books, such as 'Who What Where'. This enables the children to verbalise their answers based on their comprehension and understanding of the text. An example of this is below - 'who got stuck in the tree trunk?' Our highly trained practitioners are then able to extend the children's answers with follow on questions, such as 'how do you know / what makes you think that?'

Our reception children he children in EYFS have comprehension sessions in small adult led groups, with the focus being on high quality comprehension activities without the barrier of the children having to record answers themselves.  The stories that our children focus on are taken from our Long-Term Plan. During their comprehension sessions, the children explore high quality reading activities which are stimulating and engaging. These activities enable the children to encounter the reading content domains that they will study in Key Stage One, but in an age-appropriate way.

Examples of activities that the children will encounter:

• Inference Emoji The text is read to the children. The children then discuss what emoji (emotion) matches the character, and why. This demonstrates their understanding/comprehension of the text.
• What we Know/How we Know The teacher will tell the children ‘What we know’ and the children discuss how we know it – this leads into impression and evidence from the National Curriculum.
• Timeline/Sequencing The children sequence illustrations from the story. This demonstrates their understanding/comprehension of the text.
• Find and Point The children find and point at items from the story. This leads into find and copy from the National Curriculum.
• Who? What? Where? The children use their inference skills to answer the questions based on the illustration.

Literacy - Writing

We are very proud of our approach to writing in Early Years. Our children's writing journey starts with the children's development of their gross and fine motor skills - where the children increase their upper body strength and control and movement within their hands. Motor skill activities are planned out on our Medium Term Plans, alongside mark making activities, which is a compulsory part of our indoor and outdoor provision. We consider any mark the children make as important and significant as these are the early stages of writing - the children would then progress onto ascribing meaning to their marks. As part of our approach to Early Reading, our children focus on letter formation of taught sounds - this starts in nursery for our pre-school children if they are developmentally ready. Our reception children then carry on letter formation as part of their phonics programme, before moving onto spelling and writing CVC words. Modelling is a key part of our writing journey, where the Early Reading teacher would model daily as part of the phonics session - the children will then take part in planned writing sessions of CVC words, phrases, captions, speech bubbles, posters, and finally simple sentences. Our writing approach has been carefully constructed and planned with progression of skills in mind. 

5. Maths

We appreciate how developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically.  Our aim is for our children to be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10 (the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers), and spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures. We provide frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply the children's mathematical knowledge. We strive to develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, where the children are confident enough to 'have a go' and talk to adults and peers about what they know and notice. 

We pride ourselves on our mathematical environment, where our children are immersed in maths - it is planned for in the environment and with additional opportunities to develop mathematical skills, including high quality indoor and outdoor provision. Our children in nursery and reception have planned, timetabled maths sessions. We use White Rose Education to assist with our planning. The children take part in a stimulating maths session with the teacher, before separating into carefully planned maths activities which link to a particular focus. 

In addition to this, we also take part in the Mastering Number programme. This project aims to secure firm foundations in the development of food number sense for all children from reception through to year 1 and year 2. The aim over time is for the children to leave Key Stage One with fluency in calculation and with confidence and flexibility with number. Attention is given to key knowledge and understanding needed in reception classes, and progression through KS1 to support success in the future. 

6. Expressive Arts and Design

We understand the development of children's artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity, and that the quality and variety of what children see, hear, and participate in is crucial for developing their understanding, self-expression, vocabulary and ability to communicate through the arts. We pride ourselves on the regular opportunities that we provide our children to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. Throughout our continuous provision, our children have access to resources which enables them to work creatively from our creative areas in the classroom - the children take ownership of what resources they wish to use. Our Expressive Arts and

Design activities are planned out on our medium term plans, including indoor and outdoor provision.

We are also proud of our music offering in Early Years - our children have access to a multitude of instruments, all of which allow them to explore pitch and sounds. Mrs Payet, our specialised Music Teacher, teaches our Early Years children and introduces them to various musical instruments, rhythm, and early music notion (such as stop and go signs). Charanga Music Scheme compliments our curriculum. 

7. Understanding the world 

We appreciate that Understanding the World involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community and that the frequency and range of children's personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them. We are extremely proud of the opportunities and experiences we provide our families in order to increase their personal experiences.

We work extremely hard to increase our children's cultural capital, which in turn, increases their understanding of the world around them. Please refer to the link below to visit our Cultural Capital page.

Our topics have been planned out in detail on our long term plan, with key activities being planned to enable our children's personal experiences to increase and therefore for their understanding of the world around them to develop. Our children are able to experience various educational visits and curriculum enhancement visits multiple times a year, as well as chances to engage with the local community - one example of this is welcoming

the emergency services into our school, where the children are able to speak to the Police, Ambulance and Fire Service and explore their emergency vehicles. 

Our offering of a broad collection of stories, nursery rhymes, poetry, and fairy tales increases our children's understanding of our culturally, socially, technology, technologically and ecologically diverse world. We pride ourselves on our high-quality selection of books, all of which are diverse and have a superb level of language and vocabulary. We also engage with our culturally diverse families by offering Cultural Stay and Plays to mark special occasions.