Early Years Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

At St. John’s we understand that building secure relationships with children and their families at the early stage is key to understanding how we can maximise learning opportunities for each and every child in our setting. We provide an inclusive learning environment that educates all the children in knowledge, skills and understanding, to be effective, inquisitive, curious, independent learners and influence their wider thinking across all areas of the curriculum. Our curriculum in Early Years has been designed alongside other subject leads to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils. It facilitates them to gain the skills, knowledge and understanding, as they start out on their educational journey, supporting them to progress from their individual starting points and preparing them for their life-long learning journey.

The curriculum celebrates diversity and supports the pupils’ intellectual, creative, emotional, physical and spiritual development. Our school values alongside the fundamental British values are at the heart of our curriculum and everything we do. We endeavour to give the children the Cultural Capital they need for future success, giving each child the best start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their full potential and achieve future success. We are passionate about creating opportunities for children to communicate more easily through developing language and communication skills and specifically teaching vocabulary. Through our shared vision of mutual trust and respect we provide a secure and happy working environment in which all pupils are able to succeed and achieve their full potential.

Implementation

We believe learning through play is vital, we use the environment to ensure the children’s needs are met through continuous provision, enhanced provision and by following their interests. Our indoor and outdoor area has been carefully planned to provide a range of open ended learning opportunities, promoting independence, motivation and perseverance, whatever our children’s starting points.

Our curriculum is designed to recognise their prior learning by providing first-hand learning experiences and allowing the children to develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers to enable them to challenge themselves. We ensure the content of the curriculum is differentiated to meet the needs of all learners and is taught in a logical progression so that children build on prior learning. We plan through a topic-based approach, which can readily be adapted to meet the ever growing and changing needs and interests of all our children. Our topics are often based around core texts, which have been carefully chosen for their level of challenge and quality language, but also with a view to promote reading for pleasure.

Our curriculum covers all seven areas of learning and is fundamentally underpinned by the characteristics of effective learning, including enrichment opportunities. This curriculum is delivered through provision, child initiated activities, adult initiated activities and focused activities. Staff also provide opportunities alongside these for the children to develop their knowledge of phonics (through Bug Club), mathematics, music, religion, and stories at focused carpet time.

Pupil’s experiences are recorded through an online Learning Journal on ‘Evidence Me’ and shared with parents. As the children move through our Early Years they also begin to record their learning in workbooks.

We wish to resume our ‘Stay and Play’ sessions for Early Years in the near future. These allow parents to join in learning activities alongside their children and share the Early Years’ experience. Parents are invited in to look at the children’s learning in our ‘Talking Book’s’ and leave positive comments.

We understand to maintain high standards of teaching we have to invest in our staff by providing high quality Continued Professional Development (CPD) to match the current needs of the staff and also to match the needs of our children. Staff create an environment to match the needs and skill levels of our children and use their own teacher assessments and gap analysis to inform their planning and the quality provision.
We recognise that language and communication are vital in all areas of a child’s development. We welcome children from culturally diverse backgrounds and some of our children are at an early stage of learning English as an additional language (EAL), others with SEN. Communication and language development are therefore a consistent focus. We support children’s development by providing a fully inclusive and rich language environment, where conversations, singing and sharing stories become a regular part of the children’s day.
Although EYFS has a separate curriculum we are keen to make sure our children are prepared for the next chapter in their school life.

Impact

The broad and balanced curriculum design ensures that the needs of all individual children can be met within the environment of high quality teaching, and supported by targeted interventions where appropriate. In this way it can be seen to be impacting in a very positive way on pupil outcomes. We endeavour for pupils to be prepared for the next phase at primary school.

The impact of our curriculum is measured by assessment procedures which allow us to measure outcomes against all schools nationally. We measure the percentage of pupils achieving age related expectations by the end of Early Years. The impact of our curriculum will also, in fact, be measured by how effectively it helps our pupils develop into well rounded individuals who embody our values and carry with them the knowledge, skills and attitudes which will make them lifelong learners and valuable future citizens.