Early Years Foundation Stage

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We would like to take this opportunity to welcome you and your child as they being their educational journey with us at St Mary’s Fields Primary School. Each member of our team aim to provide the best care and learning experiences for your child, ensuring that they feel secure and happy. We understand that working with parents is a vital part of ensuring that each and every child can reach their true potential, therefore we strive to make ourselves available to support you at any time. As you have made the amazing decision to send your child to St Mary’s, we would like to reassure you that both you and your child have an amazing educational journey to look forward to, making memories and developing a life long passion for learning.

Our Intent

Our Early Years strives to promote communication and language, physical development and personal social and emotional development as the golden threads that are woven into our every day curriculum. We believe that by highlighting these prime areas, we are facilitating and unlocking a world full of potential for our children. We provide a learning experience that is bespoke to St Mary's Fields and to every cohort, based on their needs identified at baseline, emerging trends and our continual gap analysis to support our planning and provision. Every member of our team is actively involved in high quality observation and interaction; promoting exploration and curiosity through play. 

Scroll down to see our overview of the year, progression maps and our knowledge organisers. These will give you a feel of the rich learning experiences that provide for our children at St Mary's Fields. 

Implementation

At St Mary’s Fields Primary School we prioritise creating a ‘language rich’ environment through the use of open ended provision indoor and outdoors, through songs, nursery rhymes, stories and providing time for quality interactions between adults and between peers. Trained staff ensure that interactions are positive and progressive, allowing children to flourish and gather words at pace in order to become confident communicators. Staff run effective communication programmes such as Talk Boost and NELI which enhance communication, vocabulary and expressive skills. Children are encouraged to become early readers through enjoyment of books and the systematic teaching of our KTC phonics programme.. We effectively plan and design an early year’s curriculum that not only meets the emerging needs of the children but also supports, extends and develops curiosity and engagement with learning. Long term planning is frequently improved to ensure that it is well sequenced and progressive. Our planning is responsive and flexible, ensuring that we cater to emerging needs, interests and fascinations. The curriculum is planned to ensure that the unique child is considered. The sequence of the curriculum builds on prior knowledge of the child from their nursery and home experiences. Children learn number rhymes, stories and songs to develop their mathematical thinking through direct teaching and exploration. Our maths teaching is applied outside of the context of the maths lesson, such as when following a cooking recipe (measurement, capacity, number recognition etc.), tidying up, construction, role play and counting the daily dinner order for the school kitchen. As we place a high priority on physical development, we have built our school provision to give children many opportunities to strengthen their core muscles through physical play and our Big Moves physical development intervention programme. The children spend time in our purpose built outdoor area to develop through wonder, exploration and sensory experiences in our forest area, mud kitchen, climbing equipment, garden and raised beds, large sandpit and water area. At St Mary’s Fields we understand the importance of the parent partnership as part of the school community and the crucial role as part of their child’s learning journey. We create that bond through our welcome to school meetings, home visits and stay and play sessions at the start of the school year. During the school year, parents receive updates through our online learning journey Tapestry and also receive Knowledge Organisers to inform them of what their child is learning, key vocabulary explained and how they can support learning at home. As part of the learning and teaching process, children are assessed through a balance of observation during play, adult directed play and information from home. This is then used in conjunction with our new skills progression documents to help determine where the child is with their learning and at the end of the year in relation to the Early Learning Goals.

Impact

Our curriculum and its delivery ensure that all children, from their own unique starting points make good progress. On starting school in Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), a large majority of pupils’ skills and abilities are generally below national expectations, especially in Communication and Language. Children are supported with developing language in line with their peers through a range of research interventions. Evidence shows this has a significant impact on how children develop social and communication skills. The consistent approach to the teaching of phonics has led to the majority of foundation stage children secure with phase 2 phonics at the end of reception. This consistent approach also leads to children becoming confident readers through guided and shared reading. Good level of development has improved significantly since 2016 and has been consistent over the last 3 years. Internal and external moderation shows accurate assessments. Daily immersive storytelling is impacting significantly on children ‘s attitudes to books. Anecdotal data and observations show that children are accessing more frequently and sharing stories with parents, especially using our Reading Planet website, proving to be a hit during the recent lockdown. Through our open ended provision, children develop their characteristics of learning and are then able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations, making links and attempting to explain their ideas and understanding. Our children are confident to take risks, develop their resilience in relation to any set backs and discuss their experiences with their peers to improve or adject what they are doing.

Prime Area Support: Physical Development: BIG MOVES

The BIG MOVES Developmental Movement Intervention Programme has been created to help children improve their physical development and has impacts on wider school life, including developing listening and concentration, learning success and appropriate behaviour.