Early Years Foundation Stage
Welcome to EYFS at Acklam Whin
The belief that every child deserves the best possible start in life and is entitled to an education that enables them to fulfil their potential is what underpins our vision and commitment to ensuring every child accessing our EYFS curriculum is given the self-belief, foundational knowledge and skills and cultural capital needed to succeed.
Laying the Foundations
At Acklam Whin we recognise that our children have varied experiences and starting points. We are ambitious for all, understand the significant impact experiences in early years have on a child’s development and acknowledge the important role we play in shaping progress. We know that high-level engagement drives high-level attainment; our broad and balanced curriculum, rich in talk, purposeful play, and meaningful hands-on experiences enables our children’s curiosity and creativity to grow. Deliberate acquisition of foundational knowledge and skills ensures deeper understanding and lays the foundations for future learning.
Learning in the Early Years
Our Early Years curriculum is taught across the seven areas of learning and reflects the three characteristics of effective teaching and learning. We believe that building strong foundations in the Prime Areas of learning is fundamental to children making progress in the Specific Areas. As our children move through Nursery the Prime Areas take priority and are strengthened and applied into the Specific Areas of learning.
Prime Areas:
- Communication and Language
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
Specific Areas:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding of the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
- Playing and Exploring
- Active Learning
- Creating and thinking critically
Confident Communicators
Recognising that language and literacy underpins all aspects of the curriculum and is key to future attainment, our curriculum prioritises oracy and language development. We want every child to ‘find their voice’. Staff in our EYFS act as role models, initiating high quality interactions and scaffolding back and forth conversations with pupils which are rich in language and facilitate their use of recently introduced vocabulary and language structures
Reading
By sharing carefully selected songs, rhymes and stories daily, including repeated reads of familiar texts, we ensure our children are exposed to language rich environments which are led by passionate adults who inspire a love of reading. Adult-led group time in Nursery provides additional opportunities for children to develop their listening and attention and pre-phonic skills.
Daily phonics sessions in Reception start from week one and follow the Sounds-Write Synthetic Phonics Programme. This highly structured and repetitive programme ensures all children, by the end of Reception, use their knowledge of phonics to read and write accurately and with increasing fluency.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
We place a strong emphasis on our children’s personal, social and emotional development by providing a caring, nurturing and responsive curriculum. Our sensitively planned curriculum, care practices and warm, skilful adult interactions support children to be healthy, develop a sense of self, build positive relationships, have confidence in their own abilities and set themselves goals
Enabling Environments
Our cross-curricular learning themes, supported by high-quality stories, have been thoughtfully selected and coherently sequenced. Our children learn through a balance of child-initiated play and adult-led activities both in our inside and outside provision. Our continuous provision is carefully planned and resourced for children to build upon previous learning, explore new concepts, and rehearse knowledge and skills. We carefully plan ‘enhancements’ and ‘provocations’ within our continuous provision to spark children’s interests, challenge their thinking and develop their communication and language skills.
Curriculum Goals
Acklam Whin’s whole school vision and values are embedded within our Nursery and Reception curriculum goals which reflect the uniqueness of our children and provide the foundational knowledge and skills needed for them to thrive and access our KS1 curriculum when they move into Year One.
Parent Partnerships
Building strong parent partnerships is fundamental to ensuring our children have the best possible start to their education. Across the year we invite parents and carers into school to take an active part in their child’s learning. Events including ‘Stay and Sing’, Stay for a Story’, craft afternoons, library drop-in sessions, picnics and performances provide meaningful opportunities for parents and staff to work in partnership. Information regarding our Early Years Curriculum is shared through half-termly newsletters and parental meetings. Support and advice from our staff is available on a daily basis.
Sample Reception Parent Overview
Sample Nursery Parent Overview
