Jubilee Wood Primary School

EYFS - Reception 

Intent

At Jubilee Wood Primary School, we believe all children deserve an education which is rich in memorable moments and enriching experiences. Our Curriculum is designed to encourage and support all learners develop their independence, ambition, curiosity, confidence, and well-being. Allowing their natural creativity and curiosity to flourish whilst learning and understanding through purposefully planned play and adult led learning opportunities. We use children’s prior knowledge and experiences as a starting point on their learning journey and work closely with parents and carers to ensure children’s learning can be supported both at school and at home.

We are proud that our school has an underlying ethos of caring, learning and developing together which we fully integrate into the EYFS setting. Staff work hard to ensure children feel comfortable and confident in new situations and develop their personal social and emotional skills early on, so children feel happy, safe, and secure ready to learn new skills. Using the seven areas of learning we provide different topics to include a range of different skills and learning experiences to support all learners. We include exciting and engaging learning through different topics, which children can develop their own ideas and build upon prior knowledge and experiences. We understand that all the children come to school with different experiences and previous knowledge and all the staff work hard to ensure all children have the same opportunities to widen their knowledge and strengthen their understanding of the world, setting high expectations for all children.

Our curriculum celebrates different cultures and includes lots of diverse teaching opportunities supporting the children’s spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development. Children who have particular needs including children with SEND are supported appropriately allowing them to develop their independence, curiosity, and creativity through different experiences.

Implementation

We understand that children learn best when they are active, interested and engaged in their learning. Active learning involves children exploring the learning environment and leading their own play. We believe that Early Years education should be as practical as possible and therefore, we deliver the EYFS Curriculum through a combination of planned purposeful play, with a balance of adult-led and child-initiated independent activities, and some small group work.

We think it is important to challenge children’s thinking and learning and using the Characteristics of Effective Learning and effective questioning by adults, this helps children challenge their own ideas and thoughts.  Learning takes place both in the classroom, the shared areas and outdoors to help the children develop their confidence as they learn to explore, to relate to others and the world around them. Children develop good relationships with their peers and familiar adults. We encourage children to set their own goals and learn to solve problems independently through their play.

Activities are carefully planned and sequenced to meet children’s individual needs. The environment is rich in language and adults’ act as role models and provide quality interactions with children during continuous provision activities, adult-led activities, and child-initiated tasks. Adults use the approach ‘watch, wait and wonder’ before engaging in children’s activities and carefully question children to enhance their thinking and lead their learning on. Children develop their speaking and listening skills through high quality interactions with adults. This enables children to develop new language and adults can help address any misconceptions children may have during learning opportunities.

Carefully assessing children through daily interactions allows staff to provide verbal feedback immediately and support each child meeting their individual needs. Carefully chosen observations (WOW moments) are added through Tapestry and shared with parents. Parents can share observations of children’s learning at home too. These observations are used to inform planning, continuous provision activities and update children’s next steps. We recognise children’s needs are ever changing and update the planning accordingly responding to children’s needs and interests, regularly adapting topics and the books being used.

Literacy is taught using a book of the week. The books across nursery and foundation have been carefully chosen by staff to support children’s understanding, language development, oracy skills and writing opportunities. Each text is used across the week as a basis to topic planning and includes a range of different teaching opportunities. Literacy and phonics skills are included throughout the week in continuous provision activities for the children to access. In foundation children have a taught weekly big write session, this is linked to the book of the week and often includes writing supporting the children’s acquired phonic skills.

Phonics is taught daily using Read Write Inc through differentiated phonics groups. Sounds are introduced in a systematic way following the programme carefully and progress is monitored through use of Read Write Inc assessments. Children move through the programme learning to read books from the scheme. The sessions are delivered in an engaging way and activities are revisited to support children’s understanding and embed learnt skills across the year. Phonics activities support children develop their writing, reading, and rhyming skills, these activities include hold a sentence, Fred talk, Fred in your head and rhymes associated with each sound. Nursery start using Read Write Inc in the Summer term but include a wide range of phonics games and activities throughout the year to support children’s early phonetic skills including rhyme, repetition, spoken language and recognising similar letters.

The Maths curriculum is taught using White Rose maths through daily sessions in foundation. The sessions are carefully planned and sequenced to support children’s early mathematical skills. Concrete resources are used to build on prior learning and real-life experiences across the year and specific theme. This starts with looking at numbers 0-5, shapes, building numbers, one more, one less and moves onto numbers 1-10 and 1-20 (beyond 20) towards the end of the year. We want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply learnt skills and knowledge to real life situations, we include different activities to continuous provision to enable children to embed learnt skills through their independent learning. Maths’s activities are included in continuous provision in nursery and staff support learners through positive interactions and quality questioning.

Some extra-curricular opportunities include:

*Visits in the local community- Autumn walks and woodland area.

*Visitors to enhance learning - Parent visitors, Santa, police, dentist, doctor/nurse, fire etc.

Impact

Children will develop good speaking and listening skills being able to communicate with adults and their peers, sharing their thoughts and ideas confidently. They will develop their relationships with others and understand how people feel and how our actions may impact upon other people’s feelings. Children will show high levels of engagement in a range of different activities and develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including maths, literacy and physical development using these skills in different ways. They will understand how the world works developing their compassion, tolerance and understanding the rights of themselves and others, sharing these thoughts and experiences with others. 

Children will understand perseverance and failure and be able to discuss success and how they can achieve something if they did not manage it the first time adapting their thoughts and changing their approach. They will understand a sense of appropriate risk using the safety of the environment to enable them to manage these risks independently and confidently. Children will understand the characteristics of learning and be able to apply their knowledge to a range of different situations making links, challenging their thinking, explaining their understanding, ideas and thoughts.

Children at Jubilee Wood Primary School will make good progress developing their independence, ambition, curiosity, confidence, and well-being, from their starting point at the beginning of the year. This will help children prepare for a successful transition into foundation and Key stage one ready to continue their educational learning journey.

The documents below show in detail what the children in Magpies and Robins will be learning during each term across the year.