Our EYFS Intent at St Mark’s
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework sets the standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to 5 years. The seven areas of learning are:
Personal, Social, and Emotional Development
Physical Development
Communication and Language Development
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design
Our EYFS curriculum design
At St Mark’s, our EYFS curriculum has been specifically designed to recognise our children’s prior learning and experiences, both from previous settings and their experiences at home. As a Church of England school, our Christian values of love, service and belonging underpin all we do and teach in school to develop the whole child in partnership with parents, the church and the wider community. Through a balance of high-quality, direct teaching of essential skills, knowledge and values, and plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ and sustained periods of play, we inspire our children to develop a curiosity and love of learning from the onset of their primary schooling.
We prioritise the development of the prime areas of learning; Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development and Communication and Language, including oracy. Within our diverse school community, we invest heavily in developing children’s communication and language from the onset of their schooling, as we believe that oracy not only improves academic outcomes, but is a life skill to ensure success beyond school, in life and future employment. As children grow and progress, the prime areas will support them to develop skills in the four specific areas.
Although our curriculum is knowledge rich, progressive and sequential, our design enables and encourages flexibility in planning to stimulate children’s interests and imaginations through engaging and carefully planned experiences that support learning and deepen knowledge to ensure all children make good progress from their starting points. Children in EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside. We ensure activities support the Characteristics of Effective Learning in order to develop collaboration, independence, creativity and resilience. These are:
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 and develop strategies for doing things
By the end of the reception year, our core aim is to provide a solid platform, ensuring that all children are equipped with a strong foundation of knowledge, skills and self-confidence, not only as readers, writers and mathematicians, but across the spectrum of subjects, enabling them to continue their journey as scientists, historians, artists and geographers at St Mark’s.
Implementation
Our curriculum is delivered through six over-arching topics that have not only been chosen to provide inspiration for learning, but are also associated with rich, high quality texts that form our reading spine for Reception.
Our daily timetable is carefully structured so that children have directed teaching during the day. These sessions also include small, focused group work, allowing teachers to systematically check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning. In our timetable, we also ensure that the children have plenty of time for ‘exploration’ through play, with a variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision.
Please click on the link below to view the curriculum overview for year R
Year R Curriculum Overview 2023-2024
