EYFS
“The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.”- EYFS Framework 2021.
In EYFS we believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life to enable them to achieve their full potential. We know that children quickly develop in the early years and that a child’s experiences between birth and 5 years have a major impact on their future life chances. At Listerdale Junior Academy we ensure all children access high quality teaching and learning to gain knowledge and develop the skills needed to be successful learners in EYFS and beyond. We ensure that all children make good progress and that they gain a secure foundation by planning for the learning and development of each individual child and continually reviewing the impact of this.
Our curriculum has been designed by planning carefully thought out skills and knowledge to meet the needs of the children at Listerdale Junior Academy for all of the 7 areas of learning. We used the EYFS framework (view framework) and Development Matters (view document) to give us a base for our learning and then considered other knowledge and skills based on research that we know are important for our children to plan an ambitious and exciting curriculum to ensure our pupils are engaged and enjoy learning and therefore make fantastic progress.
Our curriculum allows children to develop and learn knowledge and skills in the following areas.
Prime areas:
- Communication and language
- Personal, social and emotional development
- Physical development
Specific areas:
- Literacy
- Maths
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Art and Design
Literacy and Communication and Language
Literacy and Communication and Language are at the heart of our curriculum. We value these key skills as without them, children would not be able to access other areas of the curriculum.
Phonics is key to teaching children to read quickly during EYFS. In F1 children begin the year by learning and developing phase 1 phonics skills. When they are secure with phase 1 aspects they then begin to learn graphemes using the ACET Phonics scheme. This then continues into F2 where children are taught to recognise more graphemes including digraphs and trigraphs and they are taught to segment and blend these graphemes to read words and then sentences. Children quickly progress through the scheme during their time in EYFS at Listerdale. More information about this can be found in the Phonics section of our website.
As well as phonics, we also know how important it is to expose children to high-quality story books. Each week we focus on a core story in both FS1 and FS2. The core stories are carefully chosen to ensure that they support the development of language and vocabulary as well as being engaging and exciting stories to promote a love of reading. These stories are used in teaching and read repetitively so that children have memorable knowledge of quality stories. Although these stories are core to our curriculum, children are also immersed in a wider range of books and stories through, daily stories, recommended reads, character visits and dress-up day.
At Listerdale, it is very important to us that children make rapid progress with communication and language and so it is embedded within everything that we do. We have implemented lots of extra opportunities throughout the day for children to practise using the skills that are taught. This includes at snack time, during the daily time to talk sessions, during story sessions and using the Poetry basket to learn to recite poems.
Mathematics
At Listerdale we want all children to love maths and be confident mathematicians. Our maths curriculum is centred in having high expectations for every child whilst aiming to ensure that children have the opportunity to develop a secure grounding in number sense giving them the confidence and belief to tackle problems.
Children learn and develop mathematical concepts throughout the whole day. Direct teaching sessions are led by the teacher to teach children concepts and then enhancements are added to the environment for children to practise and extend the skills they have learnt. Maths concepts are also taught through daily routines such as self-registration, voting for stories, tidy-up time and snack time.
Mathematical reasoning and talk are encouraged across the school. Children are encouraged and supported by adults to reason and problem solve. Stem sentences are used to support mathematical discussions.
Please see the EYFS Long Term Plan for more details regarding our bespoke curriculum for children at Listerdale in EYFS.
Please see the Curriculum Goals for F1 and F2 children to gain a deeper understanding of the key skills we teach children at Listerdale.
Children at Listerdale will…
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Communication & Language |
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Personal, Social & Emotional |
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Physical Development |
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Literacy |
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Mathematics |
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Understanding the World |
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Expressive Arts & Design |
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