The Early Years Foundation Stage seeks to provide:
- Quality and consistency in Early Years settings, so that every child makes good progress.
- A secure foundation through learning and development opportunities which are planned around the needs and interests of each individual child and are assessed and reviewed regularly.
- Partnership working between practitioners and parents and/or carers
- Equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is valued, included and supported.
The Early Years Team aims to provide a caring, happy, fun and challenging learning environment where children can gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for PP1 (Year 1) and beyond.
All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. Three areas are particularly crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive. These are known as the prime areas:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Children must also be supported in the specific areas which are:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
In addition to the Seven Areas of Learning, we strive to develop a growth mindset and foster the following characteristics of effective learning in our pupils:
- playing and exploring - children investigate and experience things, take risks in their learning and are willing to ‘have a go’
- active learning - children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy their achievements
- creating and thinking critically - children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop their own strategies for doing things.
