EYFS Lead/Year Leader - Becky Slight

Nursery Teacher - Stephen Peeling

Intent 

At St John’s Catholic Primary School, we believe in providing a secure foundation for future learning and development for our children. Our EYFS curriculum allows children to develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative thinkers. We aim to provide a fun, secure, challenging and rich educational environment that enables each individual to thrive! Reception and Nursery work closely with each other to ensure continuity and consistency between the foundation stage. Our Mission statement ‘I have come that you may have life and have it to the full ( John  10:10) ’ is at the heart of everything we do. As a school, we promise to enrich the lives of our pupils as we encourage and inspire each individual to grow in their faith and love of God.

We place a strong emphasis on the religious, spiritual, moral and cultural development of all our pupils. Learning at St John’s is Values-based.

We have four School Values;

• We try our best
• We love one another
• We walk with Jesus
• We live life to the full

Our values shape how we behave, what we say, how we build relationships and how we learn. They are incorporated in every aspect of life at St John’s. Every child is recognised as a unique individual. We celebrate and welcome the differences and diversity within our school community. 

Implementation

The St John’s EYFS curriculum is designed to develop the characteristics of effective learning:

• Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
• Active learning – children keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy their achievements.
• Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’. 

Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate local traditions, learning new skills to enable the children to take an active role in events throughout the year. 

The EYFS framework includes 7 areas of learning and development that are equally important and inter-connected. However, 3 areas known as the prime areas, are seen as particularly important for igniting curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building children’s capacity to learn. 

The St John’s EYFS Curriculum engages all children and ensures that all children make good progress from their starting points. A number of key resources are used to support the development of the curriculum including White Rose Maths, Little Wandle Phonics, ‘The Way, The Truth, The Life’ RE programme and TenTen RHE resources.

Where possible, the children’s own interests are used by the adults to engage the children in higher level thinking and deeper learning. Access to our continuous provision during COOL ('Choose Our Own Learning) time is highly valued and encouraged.  Each area of learning and development is implemented through planned, purposeful play, and through a mix of adult- led and child-initiated activities.  At St John’s Primary School, we believe that children have the right to a well planned outdoor learning environment all year round and access to the area is available daily throughout the session with constant adult supervision and interaction.

Parents are valued as first educators and every effort is made to inform them of the EYFS curriculum whilst providing them with the tools to continue in learning at home. Parents are encouraged to share their child’s achievements through ‘WOW’ moments through our Tapestry App and these are celebrated within school. Strategies to include and inform parents include ‘Stay and Play’ sessions, phonics workshops, reading records, WOW moments, social media posts and an open door policy.

Impact

We want each child to get the best possible start in life and to be ready to thrive in KS1. At St John’s we do this by ensuring ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning process. Staff observe pupils and these observations are used to plan next steps.

We use the Tapestry app to record observations and assessments. These are shared to parents via the app and during termly parent consultations. Each child has an English, Maths and Phonics book. We also have whole class RE books which shows learning that takes place in our RE lessons. We have a class Learning through discovery book which includes a range of photographs, observations and pupil voice for the other areas of the EYFS curriculum. During the year, we regularly track the children’s age related progress using FFT and from this, we identify children’s targets and any particular focus groups that needs support.

At the end of EYFS, staff complete the EYFS profile for each child. Pupils are assessed against the 17 early learning goals.

The EYFS team meet for regular meetings and receive necessary training linked to the SIP .Teachers attend in house and external moderations and attend regular pupil progress meetings with SLT to ensure progress is being made for each individual child.

The EYFS lead and Year leaders are committed to raising standards by attending relevant CPD, including KCSP whole academy training sessions with Early Excellence. We strive to ensure every child at St John’s, has the best start on their school journey.

KCSP Strategy

Our school continually works with other local schools, in particular those within the Kent Catholic Schools Partnership. This is to ensure that strong ‘foundations’ are laid in the Early Years on which to build pupils’ learning to ensure future success. Below you can find the KCSP three year strategy and vision.