EYFS Intent

Intent

The EYFS team have constructed a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give children
the knowledge, self-belief and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. The curriculum is
centred around broad, open ended topics which excite and engage the children.

Our curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced linked specifically to the statutory
framework for the EYFS. It builds on what children know and can do, towards the acquisition of
sufficient knowledge and skills to facilitate their future learning. We have long and medium term
plans that show how all the areas of learning are met and which allow children to progress and
develop throughout the year. Planning is logical and systematic. It builds on prior skills learnt
and becomes more challenging as the year progresses.

There is a sharp focus on ensuring that our children acquire a wide vocabulary, communicate
effectively and, in Reception, secure a knowledge of phonics, which gives them the foundations
for future learning, especially in preparation for them to become confident and fluent readers.
This is shown through the teaching and learning policy which includes how Phonics is taught in
the EYFS.
We have half-termly phonic assessments and we teach by the motto ‘Keep up not catch-up’.
We ensure that the entire environment (inside and out) is a language rich environment and
consistently encourage use of speech for communication.

Our school’s approach to teaching early reading and synthetic phonics is systematic as we
follow the R.W.I programme. This ensures that all children learn to read words and simple
sentences accurately by the end of Reception.

We have the same academic ambitions for all children and set challenging and aspirational
targets. We adapt and provide extra support for children with learning barriers with the
expectation that they can achieve in line with their peers. We use a range of interventions to
ensure the narrowing of gaps in attainment; this is evident in our records of our pupil
progress meetings.