Early Years
Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences between birth and age five have a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right. Good parenting and high quality early learning together provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.
Our Early Years Team is committed to providing children with the best possible start to school life. We give children opportunities to follow their interests and strive to ensure our children are happy, enthusiastic and confident learners with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to prepare them for future challenges. Parent and carer partnership is a key factor in the progress that children make during their time in the Early Years. We value parent communication to achieve the full picture of each individual child’s development and learning journey.
Children will learn skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through the 7 areas of learning and development.
Prime Areas:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Specific Areas:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning
Characteristics of Effective Learning are a key element in the EYFS Curriculum.
A child's individual learning characteristic will determine the way they respond to both teaching and learning that takes place at school.
The three characteristics are identified as:
- Playing and Exploring- children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
- Active Learning- children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
- Creating and Thinking Critically- children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
Our Learning
Our approach to teaching and learning is through a mixture of topic-led and child-led learning. All topics and learning themes take the children’s current learning interests into account. Our Curriculum Progression document can be seen in more detail here - progression document.
In Reception we use Tapestry to share your child’s learning journey. We will share photos and videos of the activities and learning that your child has been involved in during school for you to see and comment on. We love to see the children’s experiences and hobbies out of school and therefore encourage parents to upload photos and videos. We will upload questions to promote discussions with your child about their learning as part of their talking homework. We upload lots of other useful documents to help you understand what your child is learning at school.