Reception
Welcome to our Early Years Class page.
I am Mrs Prince and I am the class teacher. We hope you enjoy having a look at the fun and exciting things we do whilst learning in class.
Welcome to EYFS
Our class of 2022/2023
Daily timetable
Curriculum Map
Early Years Statement of Intent.
At Medlar with Wesham C of E Primary School, the EYFS curriculum is designed to encourage independent and curious learners. We acknowledge children’s prior learning and plan a broad and balanced curriculum that builds strong foundations for their future learning.
Every child in our setting is recognised as a unique and special individual and promote children’s interests to provide them with opportunities to follow their creativity and imagination. Our curriculum is tailored to inspire children to be lifelong learners and have the resilience and confidence to become the very best version of themselves. We believe that all children should be able to develop socially, physically, intellectually and emotionally. We aim to meet the needs for each individual child at their personalised level and give them strategies to have a successful start in their school life.
Pupils learn through a carefully planned curriculum which is a balance of child initiated and adult directed activities and challenges.
The curriculum is designed to help the children work towards gaining the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to be successful learners in all the seven areas of learning and developing effective characteristics of learning.
The prime areas of development are
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Physical Development
Communication and Language
The specific areas of development are
Literacy
Mathematics
Expressive Arts and Design
Understanding of the World
Children have directed teaching in Literacy and Mathematics four times a week and phonics is taught on a daily basis. All lessons are taught initially as a whole class then children have adult directed sessions in smaller groups to tailor the session to meet their needs. This ensures progress is being made by every child. We believe that play is fundamental part to children’s development, building their confidence as they learn to explore, to think about problems and relate to others around them, therefore the classroom is carefully designed to incorporate all the aspects of the children’s development. Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘busy time’ in our indoor and outdoor classroom to explore. This allows time to consolidate their learning and challenge and develop as individuals.
Reading is at the centre of our curriculum. Children are read to several times a day to help embed the ethos of the love of reading. Staff and older children often come to read their favourite stories to the children. The school follows the Read Write Inc programme (RWI) for phonics, so they have a consistent and strong start to learning to read.
All children are listened to read several times a week, with children who are finding reading challenging are listened to on a daily basis to build up their knowledge and confidence to become confident readers.
As a school, we celebrate reading by holding a termly afternoon dedicated to reading. Children and parents are invited into school to share books with each other. We also have our own library where children can choose a book and enjoy reading this at home. We also encourage children to bring in books from home to share with the class.
Our book corner in class is an area where children can have quiet time enjoying a book, books are carefully selected to link with our topis, non-fiction and fiction books, books that the children can read by decoding words themselves and also favourite books we have read together as a class.
In Mathematics, children are taught the Early Learning Goals for Mathematics from the ‘Statuory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.’ Planning for this comes from the Lancashire Maths Teams documents; sequences of learning and Learning and Progression steps. From these documents, we will plan a detailed and coherent maths curriculum which is exciting and accessible for all the children.
The lessons and provision are carefully planned to
- develop a love for maths and develop a ‘can do’ attitude to mathematics.
- to have confidence in their ability to achieve.
- develop problem solving skills to enable the children to reason and justify their findings.
- develop the ability to become an independent learner.
- have a deep understanding of knowledge, concepts and skills.
At Medlar with Wesham, we believe every child is a unique gift from God and we acknowledge children develop at different paces. Our inclusive approach means that all children learn together however, we have a strong belief in early intervention to help the children who need additional support to achieve their true potential. Interventions may include physical development to promote fine motor skills, mathematics and phonics. We are continually observing and assessing the children and will adapt activities and challenges to meet the needs of all the children.
We are continually assessing the children through observations, discussion and questioning the children about their learning. We collect this evidence through Tapestry and on the school website which is shared with the parents. We use literacy and Maths books for each individual child and have recently started a learning floor book to document our learning over the year in Reception. We undertake the statutory Reception Baseline Assessment at the beginning of the school year and also undertake our own child friendly assessments each term using our skills and knowledge progression document which will give the staff an indicator of whether the children are on or off track with their learning. This date is then used to inform future planning, gives individual learning targets and helps to extend the children who need it as well.
Our regular monitoring of Teaching and Learning includes attending relevant training and professional development so that all staff develop good subject knowledge and ae effectively supports. The EYFS class teacher will attend Early Years cluster meetings to share new ideas and updates. As a school we also are very focused on moderating outcomes across year groups and agree with the judgement and next steps. This is also supported by external, EYFS cluster meetings with other Early Years teachers.
The EYFS staff work closely with our SEND Co-ordinator and have regular contact and support for children who require communication and language or behavioural support.
At Medlar with Wesham, we believe as a school it is important to build strong and professional relationships with parents/carers of all the children. The parents /carers are the first and main educator and know their child the best. These relationships are central to ensure a child’s success. To build these relationships, we have a member of staff on the gate in the morning and a staff member visible at home time. We are also contactable through Class Dojo, email or telephone. We will invite parents into school each term to show off what we have been learning by retelling a story we have learnt, joining in with fun activities together or sharing a book together. We have parents evening and formal reports are sent home twice a year. We invite parents to join our Friday worship in church where we celebrate our weekly successes including our Gospel Value Hero Award and other performance’s we will share including class Worships and the Nativity.
Throughout their time in reception, children will learn to
- follow the school rules and be familiar to the school routines. They will join in daily activities such as class and whole school worships and dinner times without needing support.
- become responsible for looking after their own belongings, taking care of their own and school property and tidying up after themselves.
- how to be a good friend, how to solve problems between each other and how to begin to regulate themselves.
- become more independent learners and confidence in making their own choices within the classroom, being able to access the material they need to collaborate with others and create their ideas and play with intention.
- solve real life problems, makes links between their learning and feel confident to try our new ideas.
Developing these skills will help the children transition to Key Stage one and continue to become the best version of themselves and make strong foundations for a lifelong learner.