Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

EYFS at Elburton
The curriculum in EYFS is delivered through a balance of adult led and child led learning. It incorporates everything we want the children to experience, learn and be able to do. Meeting all the requirements of the educational programmes in the statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and the flexibility to allow us to respond quickly to children’s new interests and/or needs.
Below is a broad overview of what we are learning this year. Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development. All areas are interconnected.
Preschool Curriculum Map
Foundation Curriculum Map

Intent

At Elburton Primary School and Stepping Stones our curriculum is designed to: recognise children’s prior learning from previous settings and their experiences at home, provide first hand learning experiences, whilst allowing the children to build resilience, ambition and integrity. Every child is recognised as a unique individual and we celebrate and welcome differences within our school community. The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values. We provide enhancement opportunities to engage learning and believe that our first experiences of school should be happy and positive, enabling us to develop a lifelong love of learning. 

Implementation

Across our EYFS, we follow the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, published in September 2021 by the DfES. This Framework specifies the requirement for learning and development in the Early Years and provides prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum. 

Through planning, teachers ensure that there is a balance of adult led and child initiated activities across the day. During child initiated activities the adults’ role is to show an interest in the children’s ideas, build conversation, facilitate and share ideas and model different skills. Such interaction with the children is essential as this helps to build the children’s understanding and therefore guides new learning. This is then re-fed back into the planning in order to ensure that the areas being covered reflect the children’s fascinations currently within the class. By being fluid in this way current topics can be readily introduced and adapted. This allows for spontaneity within our Foundation Stage and allows for unexpected occurrences, such as a butterfly in class, birthdays, new siblings, the window cleaner, to become an integral part of our learning.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is measured by assessment procedures which allow us to measure outcomes against all schools nationally. We measure the percentage of pupils achieving age related expectations by the end of Pre-School and Foundation Stage. 

How to support your child at home

Guidance videos will be uploaded to Tapestry throughout the year covering early reading, phonics, maths and how to develop language through interactions. 

Also please see below for further documents which you may find helpful.

The document below supports understanding of the seven areas of learning and development at particular ages and stages.

Mrs Chantal Churchill

EYFS Lead

Mrs Taffeta Sammels

EYFS Support Lead

Mrs Karyn Marsden

Governor for EYFS

How does the EYFS build into the Key Stage 1 and 2 Curriculum at Elburton?