In the Early Years at Blackhall Primary School our vision and ethos is to nurture and develop the young minds of our children; to help them to succeed and fulfil their learning potential. We encourage our children to become independent and resilient learners, who are kind, caring and honest, by offering a wide range of opportunities in a unique location, which reflects our proud mining heritage.
The EYFS Framework
The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life. For a useful guide about what to expect at each stage, please read the following documents.
Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage
Principles of the EYFS
- Every child is unique
- Through positive relationships children learn to be confident and independent
- Children develop and learn in enabling environments
- Children learn and develop at different rates and in different ways
The children are given opportunities to play and explore, to investigate and experience things and to ‘have a go’. They are active and develop their own ideas. They are all unique and will have different interests and abilities. The areas of development have been divided into two groups, Prime and Specific. Our curriculum has 7 areas of learning:
Three Prime areas:
These prime areas are essential for children’s healthy development and future learning. The three prime areas form essential building blocks and as children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in four specific areas.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
We support children in creating relationships and making friends. We help them to have a positive sense of themselves, develop respect for others and learn about managing their own feelings and behaviours. Together we encourage children to have confidence in themselves and their abilities and to become more independent. We support the development of attention and concentration skills.
Communication and Language Development
Within our provision children have the opportunity to experience a rich language environment. We encourage children to speak and listen in a variety of situations with increasing attention. Staff have a good understanding of speech and language development and support children in developing their confidence to express themselves and develop their vocabulary.
Physical Development
We provide opportunities for children to be active and develop their co-ordination, movement and control. We support them in negotiating space and handling tools effectively. Providing daily activities to develop their gross motor and fine motor skills. We also help children to understand the importance of health, good hygiene habits, fresh air, healthy food choices, physical exercise and staying safe.
Four Specific areas:
Literacy
Books and stories are a very important part of our curriculum. By providing children with access to a wide range of reading materials and stories to ignite their interests, they develop a love of reading. We provide opportunities that encourage children to link sounds and letters to support them in the process of learning to read and write. We strive to ignite children’s interests by offering context based on high quality texts and planning exciting opportunities and activities based on the chosen texts.
Mathematics
We provide children with opportunities and experiences that continually develop their understanding and recognition of numbers, quantities, patterns and number fluency skills. Our Mathematical curriculum covers ‘Number, Measure, Shape & Spatial awareness. We encourage children to solve problems, including those that include addition and subtraction. In our EYFS we support children in using everyday language to talk about and describe shapes, spaces and measures. Maths can be found in all areas of our provision and children experience it in a purposeful and meaningful context within their play and daily routines.
Understanding the World
We support children in making sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about places, people, technology, the environment and the natural world.
Expressive Art and Design
Children have the opportunity to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. Opportunities are provided and encouraged for children to share their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, songs, rhymes, movement activities, stories, dance, role-play and design and technology.
EYFS at Blackhall Primary
These seven areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities according to their unique needs. This is a little bit like a curriculum in primary and secondary schools, but it’s suitable for very young children, and it’s designed to be really flexible so that staff can follow your child’ needs and interests.
Children in our EYFS typically learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outdoors (Learning to Learn). Here at Blackhall Primary School, we strongly believe that outdoor learning is key to a child’s development. The children have lots of quality outdoor experiences each day.
Our EYFS promotes partnership working between practitioners and families to ensure the best start possible for children. It seeks to make sure that every child makes good progress and has the opportunity to gain a secure foundation through learning and development opportunities. These opportunities and experiences must take into account individual children’s needs and interests.
Click here to read about our EYFS Curriculum.
