Early Years at Mill Lane Primary School

EYFS Curriculum Document 

Our curriculum was developed to flow from the beginning of your child’s time in Nursery through to the end of Reception.

Our Curriculum was developed using the Early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework alongside the non statutory documents – Birth to Five Matters and Development Matters to create our curriculum for our children.

Our curriculum is developed to aspire and inspire. We build on from what our children already know from their prior experiences. Using this long term curriculum overview ensures that our learning builds sequentially – by building knowledge, skills and learning behaviours from what the children already know and can do towards identified end points or outcomes

Our the role of our adults in our EY classroom:

Teaching in the EYFS at Mill Lane takes many different approaches.

It includes staff interactions with children during planned and child-initiated play and activities:

communicating and modelling language, showing, explaining, demonstrating, exploring ideas, encouraging, questioning, recalling, providing a narrative for what they are doing, facilitating and setting challenges.

Planning and delivery of sessions takes account of the equipment they provide and the attention to the physical environment as well as the structure and routines of the day that establish expectations.

Integral to teaching is how our team assesses what children know, understand and can do as well as take account of their interests and dispositions to learning (characteristics of effective learning), and use this information to plan children’s next steps in learning and monitor their progress. This assessment is recorded at key points throughout the child’s early years journey and is reported to parents at the end of the Key Stage.

All staff in Mill Lane:

 Value all children  – Practitioners respond to each child’s emerging needs and interests, guiding their development through warm, positive interaction and ensuring that the provision reflects and supports all children. Inclusion is a fundamental principle in valuing all children.

Support every child  – Staff always consider the individual needs, interests and stage of development of each child in their care and must use this information to plan a challenging and enjoyable experience for each child in all of the areas of learning and development.

Knowledge of child development – It is vital that all adults in our setting have a secure, in depth knowledge of child development. Understanding the stages of development and how children learn should underpin all effective, high quality early years foundation stage (EYFS) practice.

Support and facilitate learning –  A key role for our staff is to manage the pace of activities, planning varied and interesting new experiences to stimulate learning.

As a team, staff always consider the way individual children learn, play and interact. That transition and the continuity of learning for children as they move from home to nursery, nursery into Reception and then into year 1 needs to be supported by practitioners who also use information from parents and other professionals to match approaches to learning appropriate for the needs of each child.

Staff also respect children as independent learners who need opportunities to revisit, practice, make choices and have a sense of ownership of their learning.

Our Curriculum

Prime Areas of Learning

  • Personal, Social and Emotional Development
  • Physical Development
  • Communication and Language Development

Specific Areas of Learning

  •  Literacy
  • Mathematics
  • Understanding the world
  • Expressive arts and design

Our planning is based on half termly topics that are linked to the wider school curriculum.

Our topics are:

  • All About Me
  • Past and Present
  • Where we live?
  • How do we get there?
  • Once Upon Time?
  • Water, water everywhere!

Each two weeks the focus is on a book linked to the topic. The continuous provision in the classroom is linked to both the topics being covered and the children’s interests. The books are different in both Nursery and Reception but follow the main theme.

Assessment is ongoing and is entered onto the school system each term. EYFS data is reported at the end of the EYFS and parents are informed of their attainment in line with Government guidelines. Reporting also covers the children’s characteristics of learning within the personal comments.