EYFS
Our Vision:
Every child is valued, safe, and empowered to learn. We provide a nurturing, inclusive, and stimulating environment where children make strong progress across all seven areas of learning. Through purposeful play, high-quality interactions, and a carefully sequenced curriculum, children develop all the skills needed for future success. We celebrate individuality, remove barriers to learning, and foster curiosity, independence, and a love of learning, ensuring all children are confident and ready for future success.
Our EYFS Intent
We want our children to develop a sense of pride in themselves and respect for others in their immediate, school and Hartwell community. We want to foster partnerships with families and engagement in their child’s learning journey. We will work in partnership with parents and carers to encourage independent, happy learners who thrive in school and reach their full potential from their various starting points. We will support our children to develop a sense of citizenship in line with British Values.
We will provide an ambitious curriculum which enables children to develop their curiosity and problem solving. This will sow the seeds for a love of lifelong learning. We will develop our children to become eloquent orators speaking with confidence and fluency in a variety of situations. We want them to develop an enriched vocabulary and a love for reading.
We understand and follow children’s interests and for these to be nurtured to ignite their enthusiasm for learning. Through developing learning behaviours such as playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically, we want children to be autonomous with their own learning. We want them to plan, implement, consolidate and deepen knowledge and ensure children meet their next steps.
We will create an engaging and stimulating environment, both inside and outdoors, which supports and challenges learning. It will stimulate the children physically and mentally developing the health and wellbeing of our children. Giving the encouragement to manage risk and develop resilience.
We want our children to play out of doors to exercise their growing intellectual and emotional muscles, as well as their physical ones. We want them to develop their ability to think, feel, see and understand, do and to represent and express. We want them to imagine, puzzle, wonder, explore, befriend and share. To enable this; we will provide opportunities through curriculum enrichment to provide outdoors hands-on learning both within our immediate school environment as well as the wider community.
Implementation
Reading and phonics is central to Early Years. Daily phonics sessions, individual reading and class story time give our children the very best start. Both indoor and outdoor classrooms are rich in language to help widen vocabulary while reading buddies and many other creative reading opportunities help create a love for reading.
Literacy and Maths learning opportunities are embedded throughout the curriculum, ensuring children develop the foundational skills they need in early writing and mathematical understanding. Both indoor and outdoor learning spaces are designed to build strong early knowledge of number, shape and key literacy concepts.
The curriculum and early years practice have been shaped with respect to the four overarching principles:
- 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 enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers
- children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.
We have a curriculum based upon ‘Wow!’ experiences and topics, that engage the children. We encourage active learning to ensure the children are motivated and interested. We take time to get to know children’s interests and their ‘likes’ to support learning.
All areas of the EYFS curriculum are followed and planned for; ensuring there is a broad, balanced and progressive learning environment and curriculum. These seven areas are used to plan children’s learning and activities. Planning for this curriculum is designed to be flexible so that a child’s unique needs and interests are supported. The EYFS Reception curriculum is designed as a spiral curriculum, where key concepts are revisited regularly to help children secure and deepen their skills, knowledge and understanding over time.
The teaching of these areas of learning is practical and playful with support and challenge from adults in class sessions, small group sessions and when working with individuals. There is a combination of adult-led, teacher taught sessions as well as a wealth of stimulating continuous provision opportunities. Areas of need and next steps are identified for all children to ensure good progress is made. In planning and guiding children’s activities we acknowledge the different ways that children learn and reflect these in our practice.
Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside. The outdoor environment and local community are considered an opportunity for learning for all children. Outdoor learning is actively promoted and planned for. Our outdoor area is used all year round and in most weather conditions.
Staff in the EYFS make regular informal observations of the children’s learning, and collaborate together to ensure their next steps are met. The staff use a variety of methods to stimulate professional discussion about the children's learning journey. We regularly assess the children and then ensure our planning, adult interaction and learning environment support each child to reach their next steps.
We keep parents informed and we meet regularly with parents and carers to ensure children’s transition into school and through the EYFS is happy and allows them to reach their potential with the support needed. This includes learning together sessions, workshops, Class Dojo and parent consultations.
Staff support transition into Key Stage 1. Preparing children for Year 1 with visits to their new class, meeting the teacher and ensuring the environments are similar at the end of Reception and the start of Year 1.
Impact
We anticipate that our curriculum will ensure that children are equipped with skill sets and prepared for the future. During their time in EYFS they become fantastic role models and the very best of themselves. Their individuality is valued and the unique child has every opportunity to achieve and excel, based upon their own personal strengths, interest and core values whilst learning in EYFS, and in the future.
Our Children will;
- Be eloquent orators who have strong communication skills. They will be able to talk fluently as well as listen respectively and with tolerance to the views of others.
- Take pride in all that they do themselves, others and their community. They will always strive for the very best.
- Demonstrate self-regulation, emotional resilience and the ability to persevere when they encounter challenge whilst managing risks.
- Develop a sense of self-awareness and become confident in their own abilities.
- Be kind, respectful and honest, demonstrating inclusive attitudes and have a sense of their role in wider society.
Our GLD outcomes at the end of Early Years are consistently, significantly above national, demonstrating that our children develop the foundational knowledge and skills needed to flourish and excel as they move into Key Stage 1 and beyond.
Curriculum
The early years foundation stage (EYFS) sets standards for the learning, development and care of your child from birth to 5 years old.
The areas of learning are:
- Communication and Language
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
Curriculum Rationale
Our Reception curriculum is designed to ensure that every child is supported to meet the expected Early Learning Goals by the end of the EYFS. It is underpinned by Development Matters, which is used as a progression framework to ensure learning builds coherently, sequentially and at an appropriate pace for all children.
The curriculum is carefully planned around engaging themes that spark curiosity, develop children’s interests and deepen their knowledge of the world. Learning opportunities are responsive and flexible, allowing practitioners to follow children’s fascinations while ensuring coverage of key skills and concepts across all areas of learning.
A strong emphasis is placed on the changing seasons, enabling children to observe, explore and make sense of the natural world through first-hand experiences. In the final term, the curriculum celebrates and explores the unique location in which we live, with a focused study of our rural and forest environment. This promotes a strong sense of place, environmental awareness and respect for nature, while providing rich opportunities for communication, exploration and sustained shared thinking.
Overall, the curriculum is inclusive, ambitious and rooted in children’s lived experiences, ensuring all learners are well prepared for the transition into Key Stage 1.
Hartwell-Primary-School-EYFS-Curriculum
Spring-2-Real-life-superheroes
English LTP-Transcription skills (spelling, handwriting)
English LTP-Ideas generation (word, sentence, text level)
Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters.
In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world.
As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains.
Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.
Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives.Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults.
By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility.
Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being.
Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination which is later linked to early literacy.
Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practise of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.
EYFS Personal, Social & Emotional Development
Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development.Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world.
Strong, warm and supportive relationships with adults enable children to learn how to understand their own feelings and those of others.
Children should be supported to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set themselves simple goals, have confidence in their own abilities, to persist and wait for what they want and direct attention as necessary.
Through adult modelling and guidance, they will learn how to look after their bodies, including healthy eating, and manage personal needs independently.
Through supported interaction with other children they learn how to make good friendships, co-operate and resolve conflicts peaceably.
These attributes will provide a secure platform from which children can achieve at school and in later life.
EYFS Communication, Language & Literacy
The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development.
The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial.
By commenting on what children are interested in or doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children’s language effectively.
Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, will give children the opportunity to thrive.
Through conversation, story-telling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures.
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading.Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth.
It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together.
Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words.
Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).
Handwriting Progression EYFS_KS1
Letter families for handwriting CC
Letter families for handwriting LL
Letter families for handwriting OAR
Letter families for handwriting ZZM
Handwriting in Reception:
In Reception, handwriting is taught explicitly every afternoon, with daily consolidation each morning through morning work. This consistent approach supports children in developing confidence, fluency, and correct letter formation.
Teaching Approach
- Handwriting sessions are short, focused, and teacher-led, following a clear progression.
- Children are taught correct letter formation, starting and finishing letters in the correct place.
- Adults model handwriting clearly and consistently, using precise language.
Morning Consolidation
- Each morning, children complete handwriting consolidation activities as part of morning work.
- These activities reinforce previously taught letter formations and patterns.
- Tasks are differentiated to support individual needs and next steps.
Fine Motor Development
EYFS 2023: Physical Development – Fine Motor Skills
- Daily opportunities are provided to strengthen fine motor control, including:
- Dough disco
- Threading, peg boards, tweezers
- Finger exercises and manipulation activities
- These activities support the muscle strength and control needed for writing.
Pencil Grip
EYFS 2023: Physical Development – Fine Motor Skills
- Children are taught and encouraged to use a correct pencil grip (tripod grip).
- Adults provide consistent reminders and support.
- Adaptations and resources are used where appropriate to support individual children.
EYFS Expressive Arts and Design
The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity.
It is important that children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials.
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.
The frequency, repetition and depth of their experiences are fundamental to their progress in interpreting and appreciating what they hear, respond to and observe.
Developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers.
By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding - such as using manipulatives, including small pebbles and tens frames for organising counting - children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built.
In addition, it is important that the curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures.
It is important that children develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, look for patterns and relationships, spot connections, ‘have a go’, talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.
The Characteristics of Effective Learning describe behaviours children use in order to learn. To learn well, children must approach opportunities with curiosity, energy and enthusiasm. Effective learning must be meaningful to a child, so that they are able to use what they have learned and apply it in new situations. These abilities and attitudes of strong learners will support them to learn well and make good progress in all the Areas of Learning and Development.
In Class R the children are encouraged to think about how they are learning and which characteristic they are demonstrating. They each have a card with 9 squares on it and aim to collect all the 9 different dinosaurs.
Foundations of Highest Quality Provision
All children develop in different ways and development is not a linear or automatic process. It depends on each unique child having opportunities to interact in positive relationships and enabling environments that encourage their engagement and recognise their strengths. All children have agency and curiosity to learn, and will interact with other people and the world around them in different ways. Understanding these different ways of knowing about the world is central to understanding who children are and how best to support their development.
(Birth to 5 matters)
The Leuven Scales of well-being and involvement were first pioneered by Ferre Laevers and his team at Leuven University in Belgium, the Leuven Scales help us understand how focused and comfortable the children are in our setting.
Observing well-being and involvement in our Early Years setting:
According to Laevers, high levels of both well-being and involvement allow children to experience deep learning and development. A happy, involved child can experience the world at its fullest.
“If we’ve got well-being, we’ve got a lot,” says Laevers. “It indicates for us that everything that has to do with the personal social and emotional development of the child is going well.” Simply, you could say that having a high level of well-being is similar to positive mental health.
And yet, it’s not enough by itself. A child can be happily getting on with tasks, and never cause any problems, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being challenged in their learning environment.
“So many times people say ‘He’s really involved’ and actually he’s not, he’s just 'doing' it,” Sue explains. “Children are very biddable and so if you give them a task to do then they’ll do it for you and they’ll smile. But that doesn’t mean they’re involved in it.”
Observation and assessment are a key part of the Leuven Scales. Making them part of our reflective practice will give us a much deeper understanding of each child's development. Once we’ve made the observations, we’re only just getting started. It is then time to reflect and really analyse the observations to assess the children and make any changes to our practice, provision or the environment.
Ou continuous provision enables children to think for themselves and to follow their own interests, strengths, and fascinations. Through free play, children are given the time and space to explore, experiment, and make independent choices, which supports deep learning and sustained engagement.
Adults play a key role within continuous provision by observing, supporting, and interacting with children at appropriate moments, rather than directing or interrupting their play. These purposeful interactions help to extend thinking, language, and understanding while respecting children’s ideas and ownership of their learning.
This approach promotes children’s autonomy, confidence, and resilience, while also developing communication skills, creativity, and problem-solving abilities. Continuous provision allows children to revisit and build upon learning at their own pace, supporting individual development across all areas of learning.
Enhancements are added thoughtfully to the provision where appropriate, in response to children’s interests and current themes, ensuring the environment remains engaging, relevant, and supportive of progression.
CP LTP potion making area grid
Useful links:
Click here for New Parents Presentation
Parents information page for Little Wandle Phonics
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
