"In every job that should be done, there should be an element of FUN!"

Mary Poppins

Intent

At Loxley, we know how important it is to build strong foundations to learning, which we endeavour to begin upon when they start this learning journey when each child enters Early Years, Reception. Our curriculum promotes children to become inquisitive, independent and engaged learners that are happy and kind individuals. We want to nurture their creativity and imagination to become great problem solvers. We understand that each child enters our school at a different starting points and provide holistic learning to cater to each child so that they are able to become lifelong learners and embed skills they can utilise going into Key Stage 1 and throughout their school life.

In our Loxley family, we recognise every child as a unique learner and promote investigative play and to follow their interest. We encourage each child to flourish and grow in their strengths and overcome their hurdles to reach their full potential. Through themed topics and immersive, memorable experiences both in our indoor and outdoor areas, as well as trips and visitors, we support learners to develop their skills in the seven areas of learning. Being in a unique setting, we are able to cater to the individual needs of each child and work closely to form good relationships with parents and carers.

Implementation

Children at Loxley learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-led activities. Each half term, EYFS staff introduce a new theme to provide inspiration for learning, whilst also being flexible to children’s own interests that are incorporated into the provision and learning. We encourage lots of discussion time to cover the areas of Communication and Language and Personal, Social and Emotional Development which is one of the main areas to develop for the children that come into our school setting. These sessions are followed by group work where children work with a member of staff to develop their skills. These focused group sessions allow the teacher time to check children’s understanding, identify misconceptions and provide instant verbal feedback to enable a progress to learning.

Children are provided with opportunities for exploration through play and a range of carefully planned experiences to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned in a cross-curricular way to enable all aspects of children’s development including Understanding the World and Expressive Art and Design that provide sustained thinking and active learning.

Literacy – Phonics, Reading & Writing

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and our aim is to encourage a lifelong love of reading right from the start. We have daily DEAL (Drop Everything And Listen) sessions which give children the change to engage in a variety of texts, discuss vocabulary and develop their comprehension skills. Children follow a highly engaging synthetic systematic phonics programme called ‘Monster Phonics’ that support them in meeting good outcomes for reading. A rigorous and sequential approach to the Monster Phonics scheme develops children’s fluency, confidence and enjoyment in reading. At all stages of the delivery of the programme, children are assessed and gaps are quickly addressed to ensure a firm grasp of reading is achieved. Children are sent home with a fully decodable phonics reading book that is tailored to suit their individual phonics level. From our themed topics such as ‘All About Me’ to link with PSED and ‘All Aboard’ to link with UTW, we chose high quality texts to create an integrated approach to learning from which children can experience the full curriculum.

We used these themed topic books to provide the opportunity to become fully immersed within the curriculum and use this to inspire our mark making, and as we progress, our writing too.

Maths

At Loxley, we follow the ‘White Rose’, Maths Mastery approach which focuses on studying the key skills of number, calculation and shape so that children can develop a deep understanding of number and the acquisition of mathematical language. Pupils learn through a practical approach of games and tasks that involve the use of concrete manipulatives which are continued to be used through exploratory play and when completing adult-led tasks. By doing this it enables children to have the tools to apply their new mathematical knowledge to larger concepts and across a variety of experiences. Alongside this, we use Mastering Maths from NCETM Axis to develop fluency with number with a particular focus on the skill of subitising. Using a joint approach to teaching maths ensures that our children become logical problem solvers that can reason and justify their learning in a variety of practical ways.

Wider Curriculum

Our wider curriculum is taught through the areas: ‘Understanding The World’ and ‘Expressive Art and Design’. Within these topics we incorporate activities that’s develop children’s physical development and communication skills. These activities are exciting, purposeful and contextual that build on children’s natural curiosity. To enhance our topics further, we plan visitors to come into the school such as different professions when we have been learning about our topic: ‘People who help us’ and trips to places such as the theatre to watch ‘The Gruffalo’ or our local town Stratford-Upon-Avon when we are learning about transport for a topic: ‘All Aboard’. This creates an immersive and memorable experience for our children, enhancing their cultural capital and giving them experiences they can draw upon for their learning.

Our inclusive approach means that all children learn together. We offer support through additional interventions and use scaffolding and 1:1 modelling for those children who are struggling to make progress. These interventions are flexible to the children’s needs and where there are gaps in learning; these may include – language development sessions, fine motor skills sessions, phonics and number sense sessions.

We record learning in a variety of ways, through photographs of learning experiences, scribing children’s comments and recording observations on EvidenceMe. These help us to make informative assessments and assess the next steps for the children. We have created an assessment grid to measure the progress of skills across the early years areas, which we have tailored to our school setting. This allows us to track progress and see where interventions could be put in place. Regular monitoring of teaching and learning ensures staff develop good subject knowledge and training can be put in place where necessary.

Impact

The impact of our EYFS curriculum is reflected in having happy, well rounded and resilient children that successful transition into Year 1. Prior to children starting, a questionnaire is sent out to parents so that we can learn about their child’s interests, strengths and areas to improve and their previous experience in other settings. This enables us to have a good starting point to work from. We spend the first few weeks creating our own baseline for learning and enjoy getting to know each child through lots of discussion, play and observations of interactions. In addition, we complete the Statutory Reception Baseline Assessment within the first 6 weeks of term which helps to give us a good starting point for us to measure progress from. This assessment helps to measure the progress all the way from Reception to Year 6.

During busy learning time, we are mindful as practitioners of the assessment points that the children need to meet and use our assessment grid to help guide our observations, interventions and play with the children. WOW moments are recorded in our whole class learning journey and work is either recorded in exercise books or independent learning files.

Formal assessments are completed three times per year, with a final assessment being made in Summer Term 2 on whether each child has met the 17 Early Learning Goals. The judgements within our school is moderated between the EYFS across our federated schools. This supports us in providing a clear and consistent approach to assessing the progress of our children. We hold half termly meeting within our federation, to discuss actions and review our practice, that ensure there is continuous improvements within our practice and school settings.

Starting School...

Please have a read through our 'Guide To Starting School', which is full of information for parents joining Loxley school with children in the Early Years Foundation Stage.