At Willington Primary School, we are committed to providing our children with a curriculum that has a clear intention and impacts positively upon their needs.
Willington Primary School Early Years Intent
It is the aim of Willington Primary School to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils. It facilitates them to gain the skills, knowledge and understanding, as they start out on their educational journey, supporting them to progress from their individual starting points and preparing them for the next stage of their education. Our ethos in Early Years is to support children’s personal, social and emotional development so that they feel safe and secure and are ready to learn.
Characteristics of Effective Learning
In our EYFS settings we will motivate children in order to promote success. We will provide environments which ensure different types of learning occurs. The environments and opportunities that we provide will allow learners to: actively learn, play and explore and create and think critically. Children’s behaviours and attitudes will be taken into consideration at all times.
Cultural Capital
We believe that Cultural Capital is about giving each child the best start in life and the support needed to enable them to fulfil their full potential and achieve future success. We recognize that children arrive at our nursery and reception class having had different experiences to each other. We see each child as an individual and tap into their interests in order to build upon their knowledge and skills and introduce them to aspects of the world that are new to them or have yet to experience.
Knowledge and Skills
Pupils will develop their knowledge of a range of areas. There will be purposeful links throughout early years settings to ensure learners develop, consolidate and deepen their knowledge and understanding. The knowledge and skills gained should prepare children for their next stages in learning.
Questioning and Vocabulary
It is our intention to provide a curriculum which develops language, specifically teaches vocabulary, enhances and broadens experiences and opportunities for all children, which will enable them to communicate effectively, particularly for our most vulnerable young learners.
Pupils will respond to effective and challenging questioning which will allow them to respond in a variety of ways.
Implementation
Our Early Years curriculum is based on the Early Years Framework, Development Matters 2021 and Birth to 5 Matters.
Our curriculum is designed to recognize their prior learning by providing first-hand learning experiences and allowing the children to develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers to enable them to challenge themselves. We ensure the content of the curriculum is differentiated to meet the needs of all learners and is taught in a logical progression so that children build on prior learning. We plan through a topic-based approach on an annual basis, but these plans are adapted and amended to address the ever growing and changing needs and interests of all our children. Play is an incredibly important part in the learning process and as a team is something that we value. We pair this with adult-led tasks to ensure a balanced curriculum.
We will implement this by:
To view our long term plans please click on the links below.
Impact
A baseline assessment is carried out on all children on entry to nursery and reception this allows us to carefully build on their starting points and have high expectations for all children.
Children will demonstrate high levels of engagement in activities, developing their speaking and listening skills, enabling them to access more areas of the learning and communicate to both adults and children. Children develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including literacy, mathematics and physical development using these in different ways.
Children will have developed a wider sense of the world around them and can draw on these experiences during interactions with others and link this to new learning.
Children develop their characteristics of learning and are able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing.
From their own starting points, children will make good progress academically and socially, developing a sense of themselves so that they are well prepared for Key Stage 1. Our curriculum is reviewed regularly to ensure that it meets the needs of our current cohort of children.
