Why?

•  It is our intention to make our Early Years Foundation Stage accessible to all children and families from our local community.
• We firmly believe that early education is most important for a healthy, successful and happy life.
• Our EYFS aims to provide the best starting points in education; many starting at the age of 3 where we provide both the 15 free hours and the 30 hours childcare.  
• On entry into our Nursery setting, the majority of our children have low starting points across all 7 areas of learning. The children begin their learning journey with us with a baseline assessment of entering the low areas of their age-related expectations.  
• All areas of learning and development are important to us and they are all inter-connected. Three areas are particularly critical for inspiring children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. These are the known as the prime areas; Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language and Physical Development.
• Our EYFS also supports children in four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied. The specific areas are; Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design.
• We follow whole school schemes of work such as JIGSAW (PHSE), Discovery RE and White Rose Maths to ensure continuity across school and to ensure that our children are provided with the best grounding to progress in later years.
• We tailor our learning environments to provide certain vital life experiences which they may not encounter at home, which inform early learning and development.
• We are proud of our inclusion provision that we are able to provide in Early Years. Our ‘Shining Stars Hub’ is an outstanding setting which ensure that children with additional needs are happy, safe and able to access the curriculum.
• We personally feel that is important to promote the enjoyment of learning. Our children need to learn from each other and the adults’ arounds them. They also need to experience the sense of pleasure that comes from completing a task or developing and improving their skill set and knowledge.
• We pride ourselves in working in a partnership with parents, carers and other settings to provide the best possible start at Milking Bank, ensuring each individual reaches their full potential from their various starting points.
• We believe that high level engagement from families ensures high level attainment.

How?

• We fully embrace the development of the ‘whole child’ and have devised an educational programme that helps to ready our children to optimise their learning and development.
• We follow the Development Matters document to plan and enhanced learning within our Early Years curriculum.
• We promote the development of skills and understanding across all areas of the curriculum to become more school ready by the time they reach the end of their journey in EYFS.
• Our EYFS planning involves activities and experiences to help children develop a positive sense of themselves, others and the world around them.
• We provide our children with the highest quality learning environment, thus creating an enriched, stimulating and enjoyable place to learn and explore.
• We pride ourselves on providing all children with a language rich environment to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves to speak and listen in a range of situations.
• We allow the individual child to be the centre of their own development. Providing plenty of opportunities to learn new skills and develop their learning and skills through child-initiated play.
• We have dedicated staff who are committed to supporting every individual child that attends our EYFS setting.  
• We continually develop and support our staff ability to deliver high quality teaching experiences across the curriculum.
• We quickly and effectively identify and target children for specific interventions to support their development.
• We aim to form positive relationships with parents and carers to ensure a strong school to home link is made from the start of the child’s education. We ensure to provide an ‘open door’ policy, enabling all parents and carers to always feel welcome in our setting. Tapestry, our online Learning Journey, is also an excellent resource for good communication with parents and ensuring parents have a good understanding of the learning taking place at school.
• The timetable is carefully structured so that children have directed teaching during the day. The timetable changes throughout the year to take into consideration the changing needs of the children. These sessions are followed by small, focused group work. This means the teacher can systematically check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning.
• Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms.

What?

• We complete ongoing formative assessments whilst teaching to inform next steps in learning.
• All staff compete child-initiated observations which are a focal part in identifying next steps in learning and recognising progress and celebrating success in the EYFS. This is done through an online platform, Tapestry. This is also an integral part of parents being involved in their child’s learning and development points.
• Termly summative assessments completed by key staff.
• Home learning challenges are set to allow parents to support and continue learning at home.
• Mid-term and End of Year reports are given to parents to ensure they are fully aware of the progress their child has made and their next steps.