Early Years Foundation Stage

FPS EYFS VISION AND RATIONALE

 

Curriculum pedagogy

 

Our EYFS Curriculum at FPS is designed to achieve the balance between Continuous Provision, Enhanced Provision and Directed Teaching in order to suit the needs of our children. We endeavour for our children to become masters of their curriculum using the approach taken below. We allow for some space in our curriculum to ensure we meet the needs of the unique child; predictable interests of 3-5 year olds are catered for within our provision and fascinations can be built upon within our enhancements. 

 

Below figure taken from Early Excellence

 

Continuous provision

Continuous Provision is the heart of our curriculum. It starts with the child, and is built from them. This means the resources we have selected, and the areas we have created will ensure our children are able to master their curriculum. The children’s interests, needs and developmental stages inform what our environment will look like. We ensure the children are able to access opportunities to have deep, embedded experiences by carefully selecting resources and allowing repetition of skills which, in turn, ensures they can be masters of their learning. We ensure each resource earns its’ place in our classrooms and can see the learning potential with each item.

 

Enhanced provision

Enhanced provision are the things we add to our Curriculum to build upon our children’s learning. This includes our MTPs, visits, visitors and specific resources we add to our environment. Enhanced Provision also includes the use of Targeted Provision where we support children who require extra in certain areas of learning. This part of our Curriculum has been designed with support from the EYFS Framework, Development Matters, Birth to 5 and Subject Leader input. We try to ensure our directed learning is cyclical so our children have opportunities to revisit and master, just as we do within our Continuous Provision.

 

Directed teaching

Directed teaching is the parts of our curriculum that need explicit teaching. These include things such as phonics (segmenting and blending), many areas of maths and other specific skills. This may look like a whole class carpet session or a small group directed task.

Progression in our Curriculum

Our Provision planning and MTPS have been developed to ensure rigour and progression for all our children. This is achieved by ensuring our environments have carefully selected resources that our children are able to master over their time in the EYFS. The role of the adult also provides progression suited to the unique child through quality interactions which develop and move play on. The Continuous provision plans outline the possible learning in each area and the role of the adult when working with children there. Our MTPS are also progressive where Prime areas, English and Mathematics learning is both progressive and cyclical to support our children.

 

 

The Characteristics of effective learning in our Curriculum

The characteristics of effective learning are defined as:

Playing and Exploring

Active Learning

Creating and Thinking Critically

 

These characteristics underpin learning and development across all areas of learning. They are supported in our curriculum and support our children to become, and remain effective and motivated learners.

 

Throughout our curriculum our children are given opportunities to demonstrate and develop the characteristics of effective learning in the following ways:

 

Playing and Exploring

• They love finding out and exploring.
• They like to act out experiences with others.
• They have a ‘can do’ attitude.
• They take risks in their learning and when something doesn’t work out, they try a different way.
• They love a challenge!

 

Creating and Thinking Critically

• They have their own ideas.
• They find ways to solve problems.
• They make predictions.
• They test their ideas.
• They think carefully about how they are going to approach an activity.
• They think about how well their activity is going and they change their way if something isn’t working.

 

Active Learning

• They are not easily distracted.
• They spend a long time concentrating.
• They show lots of interest in what they are doing and pay very close attention to the details.
• They enjoy achieving what they have set out to do.
• They keep on trying and never give up (even when they find something tricky, they find another way)