Our Early Years Intent
Intent
At Springwell Park, our ultimate aim is to enhance our children’s curiosity, confidence, and competency and make them flourish regardless of backgrounds, their circumstances or individual needs. We strive to instil a love of learning into our children and make them life-long learners. We aim to create a learning environment which is inviting and engaging and provides our children will ample opportunity to develop and progress – a learning environment which is language rich, with stimulating and effective continuous provision, both indoor and outdoor. It is our intent for our curriculum to enable our children to develop within the three Prime Areas, developing physically, verbally, cognitively and emotionally, before securing knowledge within the four Specific Areas. We aim for our children to become skilful communicators, being able to connect with others through their continually developing language and vocabulary. We intend for our curriculum to not only create able readers (both with word-reading and comprehension), but also create children who foster a ‘love of reading’ ethos – this is through our systematic phonics programme, approach to comprehension, and by placing high quality stories at the heart of what we do. We intend for every child to have access to a broad and balanced curriculum which prepares them for the future – a curriculum which is progressive, enabling the children to build on top of their skills and knowledge between each of our EYFS years. Our aim is to ensure that no child falls behind, and we do this through our approach to tailored interventions, including early reading, maths, communication and language, and fine/gross motor skills. Our aim is for our curriculum to be tailored to each individual child, with us adopting a child-centred approach. We aim for our curriculum to increase our children’s life experiences, and we do this through planning various opportunities to increase the children’s level of cultural capital. Through all of this, we aim for our children to make accelerated progress, and be emotionally and academically ready for the transition to Year 1.
At Springwell Park, we have implemented a successful Early Years curriculum. 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. 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.
Implementation
Four overarching principles that guide and shape our practice are:
Our curriculum provides a play based and experiential learning environment, combined with focused teaching and learning opportunities to ensure children make rapid progress before transitioning to year 1. Our curriculum topics have been successfully mapped out on our Long-Term Plan, with half termly Medium-Term Plans detailing the learning opportunities (both indoor and outdoor), the key vocabulary which will be used to increase our children’s communication and language, as well as the focus text and other stories that can be used to branch out – therefore contributing to our language and storytelling rich environment. Our children benefit from meaningful learning across the curriculum and our highly trained and passionate staff plan for learning opportunities, including communication, sustained shared thinking, and physical challenge.
Our approach to Early Reading has ben implemented successfully with a clear balance between decoding and comprehension. We pride ourselves on our commitment to our chosen phonics scheme, Read Write Inc. All of our staff, irrespective of whether they are in Early Years or teach Early Reading have had Read Write Inc training, including Staff Meetings, INSETS, coaching sessions, and visits from external Read Write Inc Trainers. Our Read Write Inc journey starts in nursery for those children who are developmentally ready, learning set 1 single sounds and their corresponding rhymes. The children then progress to reception, where we begin with Read Write Inc from the very start of the school year. We pride ourselves on not letting a child fall behind and monitor progress regularly, ensuring those children not on track receive tutoring in the afternoon.
Our approach to comprehension is another success story. In order to develop our children’s understanding of what they have read, we have reading sessions, with a focus on comprehension, successfully implemented within our EYFS setting. This is where they are able to listen to a high-quality story, read by the teacher, before completing comprehension activities in small, adult led groups. The skills that the children learn here set them in good stead for when they start whole class reading sessions within Year 1.
Our approach to maths and how we develop our children’s early number knowledge has been imbedded successfully into our curriculum. Our Early Years staff have worked extensively with our talented Maths Lead, as well as an external Maths Consultant regularly. Our children’s maths curriculum is supported by White Rose Education, where the children complete high-quality activities in a whole class setting, before filtering into carefully planned and effective provision. Mastering Number also compliments our maths provision, helping the children to develop secure number knowledge. We pride ourselves on our maths assessments, and any children not making sufficient progress are monitored and interventions occur, such as 1:1 number correspondence.
We work hard at Springwell Park to ensure that our level of parental engagement is high. We have successfully implemented opportunities throughout the year to increase the chances of collaboration, ensuring that home-school links are present and are used to enhance learning opportunities. We are able to use our strong relationships with the parents and the children to enhance the curriculum and make it more child-centred, which is always our goal. We use home-visits and home-school books to capture the children’s interests and then embed into the learning environment. Our parents and carers are invited into our provision multiple times a year, for events such as Come Read with Me, Come Calculate with Me, and Stay and Play sessions. In addition to this, we have successfully timetabled workshops throughout the year to ensure that the parents and carers know how to support their child at home.
Our use of assessments and observations within Springwell Park enable us to successfully secure everything we intend within our curriculum. We use assessments in order to pinpoint what gaps the children have within their learning and development, and interventions are then put into place to ensure rapid progress. Our children’s next steps are carefully planned. Key observations and milestones are recorded in-the-moment by practitioners, and they utilise their strong relationship with children in order to truly understand the child’s knowledge and ability. All staff and key-workers communicate together to ensure a secure understanding of what the children need to progress.
Impact
The children within Springwell Park experience a smooth transition between the 2Y Room, Nursery, and Reception, and beyond. Our Early Years children thrive at Springwell Park and are always ready for the next milestone within their school career, with effective communication and collaboration ensuring the children leave Early Years with a solid foundation of learning of which to build on.
Our use of Learning Journeys, Floor Books, and individual exercise books (for reception) showcase our children’s success within our Early Years provision, with the opportunities of learning and life experiences (cultural capital) provided to them.
As a team, we place a huge emphasis on staff CPD and carry out internal moderation sessions to ensure we are confident with our judgements. We monitor assessment procedures regularly in order to ensure we can effectively demonstrate what learning is taking place and how each child is progressing within all seven areas of Early Years.
The progress that our children make within Early Years is phenomenal and shows how successful the journey is that our children go on within Springwell Park.