Curriculum Intent

At Istead Rise Primary School, our aim is to ensure that we provide all children with the best start to their learning journey, one that recognises every child as a unique child and supports them to reach their own potential – regardless of background, circumstance or need. We provide positive relationships in a calm and caring environment that maintains strong routines, to ensure the children feel safe, happy and confident in our care. We recognise that children benefit from strong partnerships between practitioners and parents/carers, and we work hard to build on those relationships and keep communication open. We support children to become inquisitive, innovative and independent learners through quality and consistent teaching that supports the development of individual children. 

Our Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum is designed to be exciting, engaging and enriching to ensure that every child is challenged to meet their own potential. We recognise that children learn and develop in enabling environments, with teaching that responds to individual needs and interests, to build on learning over time. We consider and recognise children’s prior learning experiences, and build on these to develop interpersonal skills, resilience and critical and creative thinking. 

Our EYFS provision places structured, teacher-led sessions, alongside a play-based approach to learning, which provides opportunities for our children to independently explore learning, based on their own interests.  We want to ignite and stimulate our children’s curiosity and imagination and seek to enrich their learning through engaging and language-rich indoor and outdoor provision. We foster a love of reading and provide continuous and enhanced provision that utilises imaginative stories, poems and thought-provoking texts.

Through interaction with adults, good role models and stories, we promote our school’s four core values: Independence, Respect, Perseverance and Self-Reflection. These core values provide the cornerstone of our children’s personal, social and emotional development and are embedded throughout our curriculum. The children are taught these values from day one, leading to the development of effective learning behaviours that continue throughout the school. 

Implementation

At Istead Rise, we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory framework to ensure consistent learning standards and care of children in the Reception year.  The framework is made up of four overriding principles, which our early year’s education is based upon: 

• Unique Child 

• Positive Relationships

• Enabling Environments 

• Learning and Development 

The learning experiences within our EYFS are linked to the seven areas of learning and development. These areas are split into three prime areas and four specific areas.  The three prime areas are those that underpin all learning and are considered essential for the healthy development and future learning of our children. 

Prime areas include:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development: this is crucial for emotional wellbeing and is fundamental to all areas of learning, acting as a foundation to school readiness. It enables children to build relationships, understand feelings and build confidence. 

• Communication and Language Development; this is essential for building language, listening and comprehension skills. It focuses on fostering high quality interactions, increasing vocabulary and supports children to express themselves effectively. 

• Physical Development; this focuses on enabling children to be active, healthy and independent – developing gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, core strength and posture and pencil grip. These skills set out the foundations for writing, as children need strength, coordination, balance and fine motor control before they can begin to form letters correctly.

As children grow and make progress in the prime areas, this will naturally support them in developing skills in the four specific areas. 

Specific areas include: 

• Literacy; this focuses on fostering a love for reading, developing language comprehension and writing skills. This involves developing phonic knowledge, decoding skills, understanding texts and mark making to build a foundation for lifelong literacy. 

• Maths; focuses on developing a strong grounding in number, numerical patterns and spatial awareness through hands-on experiences. It aims to support children to be confident Maths learners, developing an ability to problem-solve.

• Understanding the World; this supports children to make sense of the physical world around them, communities and the past and present. It aims to foster curiosity, exploration and understanding of people, places, technology and the environment. 

• Expressive Arts and Design; this focuses on developing children's imagination, creativity and self-expression through hands-on explorations of arts, dance, music and role-play. It enables children to communicate feelings, ideas and perceptions of the world beyond words.  

These seven areas of learning are not taught in complete isolation but are woven together through carefully planned teaching and well-thought out continuous provision – prioritising language-rich interactions, emotional security, strong relationships, physical development and play. By prioritising the prime areas, in all we do, it allows children to develop holistically. For example; one adult-directed English lesson can promote listening skills and discussion of the story (Communication and language), turn taking in sharing ideas and feelings (PSED), story structure and new vocabulary (Literacy) and draw characters from the story (physical development) – with further opportunities in provision to retell the story with props/small world play (Expressive Arts and Design). 

To develop skills and enable children to leave reception ready to start the KS1 curriculum, we set out ‘topics’ that are carefully tailored and resourced.  Topics change termly, and are flexible, allowing for them to be adapted to meet the needs of the children and to develop core knowledge and skills that need to be taught and developed. Each week we choose a high-quality and diverse story book, or age-appropriate non-fiction text, that reflects the interests of the children. This is taught through whole class adult led teaching, small group work and continuous provision time, allowing children to explore independently, supported with high quality adult interactions. 

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Characteristics of Effective Learning are used to describe how children learn, rather than what they learn. They are a central aspect of Early Years, as they help teachers understand a child’s attitude, thinking, motivation and approach to learning. Our EYFS learning environment, indoor/outdoor continuous provision and adult directed times strive to promote the three characteristics of Effective Learning:

• Playing and Exploring - children investigate, 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, making links and develop strategies for doing things

Early Reading and Writing

Early reading and writing is taught using the Read Write Inc scheme (RWI). This phonics scheme will help children learn letter sounds, how to blend sounds together for reading, and how to form letters and segment the sounds in words for writing. The use of pictures, rhymes and mnemonics supports children by embedding knowledge of phonics to memory. Daily adult-led sessions are delivered by fully trained practitioners and are structured so that children participate in speaking, listening, reading, writing and spelling activities. Catch-up sessions are used to support pupils learning when required. In EYFS, from term 3, children will come home with a RWI book that is suited to the level of the majority of the class – which will be read in class daily. They will also bring home a RWI book that is suited to their own assessed ability.  Alongside this, a sharing book is sent home with children’s planners that we encourage parents to read and share with their child. Class stories and poems are read daily to promote an enjoyment and love of reading. 

Maths

EYFS follows the White Rose Maths Scheme with an emphasis on developing a mastery of early mathematical concepts in number, calculation, shape, space and measure so that children develop deep understanding and the acquisition of mathematical language. Children receive whole class daily inputs of Maths, that is followed with exploration, games and activities using manipulatives. These are then applied to their own learning through continuous provision, with enhanced provision activities to embed the learning. Activities and experiences are carefully designed to help our children remember the content they have been taught, and to support them with integrating their new knowledge across the breadth of their experiences and into larger concepts. 

Assessment

Whilst the children are learning, staff make regular observations to ensure that progress is being made, potential areas where additional learning support may be required are identified and children will be supported to work towards their own goals. Information from observations is uploaded to Arc Pathway, an online tracker, which parents can access. Parents can also upload observations from home, which enable practitioners to build a picture of the child’s learning, progress and development, while they are on their journey towards achieving the Early Learning Goals in July. Formative and summative assessments are made in line with Development Matters objectives. These assessments ensure that our planning, adult interaction and learning environment support our children to achieve their next steps. 

Strong Partnerships

Here, at Istead Rise, we recognise and value the importance of building strong relationships between Teachers and parents/carers, believing that strong partnerships are at the heart of an effective Early Years education. In the Foundation Stage children rapidly develop across communication, social skills, emotional wellbeing, physical development and early learning. We uphold an open-door policy—welcoming parents at the gate each morning and making ourselves available to discuss your child’s needs for additional support, any external changes that may impact their progress, or any concerns you may have.  Equally, we will seek out to contact you if we have recognised any difficulties or changes in your child, that we feel you may be able to support at home or to help us give your child the best support.  When the adults around the children work together consistently, children feel safer, more confident and more able to thrive.

Further to this we use ARC Pathway, a platform that allows us to show you some ‘wow’ moments at school, show progression in their learning, or any special activities that have taken place. This is an open form of communication that also allows you to be able to upload any ‘wow’ moments from home, or anything you, or your child, would like to share with us. 

In EYFS we strive to keep you as informed as possible and encourage you to look at the learning we share, and discuss it with your child. Fortnightly the school sends home a newsletter that will also showcase any work we are doing in Early Years. This is a great way to see what topics we have each term, what book we have been reading in those weeks and all of the learning your child has been doing. 

Cultural capital

Whilst the children’s interests are at the heart of our curriculum, we ensure that we provide all pupils with a broad range of experiences and opportunities covering a variety of festivals and celebrations, giving them the cultural capital they need for future success. All children perform in a nativity and participate in school trips. Our children enjoy visits from a vast range of visitors, such as community members, including the police, fire service, postal workers, vets, doctors and nurses (where possible). 

British Values play a fundamental part of our curriculum and everything we do; we focus on promoting the more general concepts within the Early Years Foundation Stage and understand that the children’s development within these areas is key to promoting the values in the long term.