In EYFS at Paddox primary we would like to offer children with a broad and varied curriculum that links to their known and widening to our community and beyond. Our curriculum is developed around to ensure the delivery of the EYFS Framework. We recognise that children are coming to the end of their Early years and our curriculum at Paddox ensures they are prepared for the transition into Year 1.
Early Learning Goals
Prime Areas
• Communication and language
• Physical development
• Personal Social and /emotional development
Specific areas
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the world
• Expressive Arts and Design
We prioritise early reading and phonics here at Paddox and as such start to learn phonics early in the first term. These skills are key to the children making immediate and accelerated progress in the development of early reading. We use Unlocking Letters and sounds systematic synthetic phonics programme will explicitly teach daily phonics across Early Years and Key Stage One, and provides a superb foundation in reading. This phonics approach is then fed through all aspects of the EYFS curriculum.
Early mathematics is also a key focus area and we believe in developing deep understanding of early concepts which will unlock further learning. Working at mastery levels enables children to put maths in to real life concrete scenarios and examples and then moving into visual representations before completing abstract tasks. We use Maths Mastery and we use a flexible approach to ensuring all children have the underpinning skills to access this.
Alongside our core curriculum we want to offer the children a breadth of learning across all subject areas. Each term we focus on different aspects then re visit these common themes within subject areas across the year to consolidate and extend. Our curriculum offers mini topics within a term for us to hook our learning on. We have key texts/’book hooks’ that support this approach. We want the children to thrive on a vocabulary rich environment that fosters the love of language.
Children access this curriculum in three different ways. Whole class inputs throughout the day, guided groups or one to one and zone times. When delivering our curriculum, we ensure children have as many hands-on opportunities and experiences as possible and teachers model concepts constantly to develop skills and understanding.
EYFS has a large range of learning available at all times across our five zones. The children are able to use the creative zone, outdoor classroom, understanding the world zone, maths zone and word zone. Our environment is organised to ensure all children access the broad and varied offering. Within each zone, children have continuous provision that they can revisit, consolidate and extend and lead their own learning. This allows children to solve problems, revisit learning when appropriate. We also offer enhanced provision tasks which are specifically set up to promote future learning, current learning or past learning focuses. The children rotate round these zones and encouraged to complete learning through play and specific activities. The adults in setting support the children with key concepts and layer their language and extend their oracy skills.
The children flourish and grow in their Reception year ready to embark on the curriculum in Key stage 1. Children will make significant progress from their starting points and will enjoy and achieve in their everyday learning experiences. The children obtain the key values and learning behaviours they require to be confident learners. The children have who have acquired all the progression steps they will need. Children will be taught discreet subject areas and attained the necessary skills and knowledge to prepare them for the rest of their Paddox years. Children will be confident readers who have a love for books, exciting vocabulary and thirst for knowledge.
The Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) is a statutory assessment from September 2021 onwards. It provides a snapshot of where pupils are when they arrive at school. It will then be used to measure the progress schools make with their pupils between Reception and Year 6, the end of Primary school.