Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum

At Risley Avenue Primary School, the aim of the EYFS (Nursery and Reception) is to ensure that all children thrive in a safe, secure and happy environment. We know children learn best through a balance of focused teaching and a wide range of carefully planned independent play. We aim to give every child a flying start to their schooling and to lay solid foundations for their future success in the primary school curriculum and beyond.

The EYFS Curriculum consists of seven ‘Areas of Learning’. Within each Area of Learning, there are sequences of developmental steps which children progress through to reach the ‘Early Learning Goals’. These Goals are the measure of your child’s readiness for the move to Year 1.

The Areas of Learning are divided into ‘Prime’ and ‘Specific’ areas. Children need to be confident in the ‘Prime Areas of Learning’ before teaching in the ‘Specific Areas of Learning’ can be effective.

Prime Areas of Learning

Personal, Social and Emotional Development focuses on supporting children to develop a positive sense of themselves and to have confidence in their own abilities; to form positive relationships and develop respect for the feelings and needs of others; to manage their own feelings, and to understand appropriate behaviour in groups.

At Risley we:

ensure that each child in the Nursery has a ‘Key Worker’ – person who builds a strong and supportive relationship with them which underpins their learning at school

Develop our class and wider school rules around these key areas
Actively engage our children in good learning behaviours
Reward children’s efforts to take responsibility for themselves
Support children in redressing wrong choices
Keep a Tapestry online journal for each child where we share all the marvellous activities they have been doing in school with peers and family

Communication and Language Development focuses on developing children’s speaking and listening skills, broadens their vocabulary, and develops a love of stories, rhymes and songs.

At Risley we:

Engage children with a wide range of rhymes, songs and stories every day
Focus on providing children with a rich and varied vocabulary so that they learn to express themselves clearly and confidently
Strongly encourage to parents to communicate with their children in the language they are most confident with
Offer parents a range of support and advice to help them further develop their children’s language skills at home

Physical Development focuses on developing children’s co-ordination, control, and movement. There is also a focus on supporting children to understand how to be healthy, encouraging good exercise and eating choices.

At Risley we:

Want every child to be strong and healthy
Offer a balance of activities indoors and outdoors every day which Promote whole body co-ordination as well as eye-hand co-ordination
Talk with children about staying healthy at times when the talk is meaningful, for example while we share our daily fruit and milk, and during our weekly PE lessons

Specific Areas of Learning

Literacy Development builds directly on the learning within ‘Communication and Language Development’ and supports children in the process of becoming confident readers and writers.

At Risley we:

Actively seek to teaching the essential skills of reading and writing in imaginative, engaging and meaningful ways
Follow the ‘RWI’, (Read Write Inc), programme which begins in the Nursery with ‘pre-reading’ and ‘pre-writing’ skills, then teaches reading and writing through phonics through Reception to KS2. https://www.ruthmiskin.com/
We follow the ‘Power of Reading’ scheme of work, which gets the children to think about all areas of the book, from the characters, setting, inference and comprehension
Monitor our children’s development in these key skills very carefully to ensure every child’s progress

Mathematical Development focuses on developing and applying a wide range of mathematical skills, knowledge and vocabulary - counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describing shapes, spaces, and measures.

At Risley we:

Know that children need rich and challenging opportunities to use their maths skills and knowledge every day
Teach maths every day
Provide indoor and outdoor maths play for children to order numbers, explore measure and capacity in water, sand and digging areas, to play games, to compare properties of 2D and 3D shapes through a wide range of construction, to sing number songs, and to join in with meaningful counting

Understanding the World supports children to make sense of their world through observation, exploration, and investigation. These are key skills which will be further developed by History, Geography, Computing, Science, and Religious Education as the children move into Year 1.

At Risley we:

Are a truly multi-cultural school - we wholeheartedly value the learning opportunities this opens to us all
Encourage children to share what they know about their own cultures, and to listen with respect to learn about other cultures
Celebrate important festivals in class and in assemblies
Encourage parents to visit our classes to cook, to share songs in home languages or to tell stories
Have a vegetable garden which the children look after
Balance the children’s needs to learn from first hand experiences with their need to understand and be confident to use technology to support their learning

Expressive Arts and Design focuses on enabling children to develop skills and knowledge through art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.

At Risley we:

Incorporate music and movement into our daily teaching
Always have a role play area linked to the children interests
Have a range of role play props in our outdoor space for children to develop their own imaginative play
Have a ‘Creation Station’ in each classroom where children can access and explore a wide range of resources independently – including, paint, glue, papers, recycled materials
Have a stage area in our outdoor space where children can have access to musical instruments, a CD player and karaoke machine