EYFS

Welcome to Billinge St Aidan’s Early Years Department which consists of Blossoms (2–3 year olds), Pre School (3-4 year olds) and Reception Class (4-5 year olds).

Look at us at work and play! Click on a photograph to view the gallery.

Intent, Implementation and Impact Statements

Intent

Our EYFS Curriculum is designed to reflect the interests and needs of our children and to immerse our children in a language rich environment. We prioritise high quality interactions punctuated with adult focussed activities where appropriate. Our children guide and drive their own learning through carefully resourced continuous provision with enhancements to aid the development of skills and knowledge.

Our curriculum is developed to prioritise progressional learning, where pupils know more and can do more, building on what they have been previously taught. It is also designed to be responsive to the needs of our children, families and community.

We encourage our children of all age ranges to become independent, creative, kind and confident explorers, with a love of books, writing and maths.

Each thematic topic is planned with the aim of ensuring that all children leaving Reception are ready to start the KS1 curriculum. Topics do not always last a specific amount of time but are developed based on the children’s learning at the time and the related core knowledge and skills which need to be taught. All topics are carefully resourced and where possible are introduced with a high quality, diverse story book or age appropriate non – fiction text that reflects the interests and experiences of our children.

Implementation

Our Early Years curriculum aims to teach all children the skills and knowledge in order that they reach the seventeen Early Learning Goals described in the Early Years Foundation Stage framework. Our staff are confident with assessing necessary starting points based on quality baselining interactions. Staff know the children well and quickly recognise those who will need early intervention due to entering our setting with low starting points. They monitor who is and is not on track regularly, put in intervention sessions and tailor future planning to provide more opportunities for skill development and progress.

As many of our activities as possible are play-based, however there is also a need for some direct teacher-led activities to ensure all children gain essential knowledge and skills. Priority is given to providing sufficient sustained periods of play with support and resources to allow children to repeat and deepen their taught skill development.

We use Development Matters to support our knowledge of child development and as a supporting document for our curriculum. It supports our staff to create organic learning opportunities as opposed to being constrained by formal expectations.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is monitored by termly pupil progress interviews, data analysis and monitoring visits.

Children demonstrate high levels of engagement in activities, developing their speaking and listening skills, enabling them to access more areas of the learning and communicate to both adults and children. Children develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including literacy, mathematics and physical development using these in different ways. Children have developed a wider sense of the world around them and can draw on these experiences during interactions with others and link this to new learning. Children develop their characteristics of learning and are able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing.

Practitioners working with the children in Blossoms complete a two year check on all children between their second and third birthday. In preschool, the nursery teacher completes a ‘checkpoint’ around each child’s third and fourth birthday to ensure that children are on track. Children who are thought to not be on track at these checkpoints will have interventions put in place to support them. If any child is considered to need support from outside agencies, a discussion will take place between the nursery teacher, child’s parents and school SENDCo to allow the child to be referred for additional support.