EARLY YEARS
EARLY YEARS
INTENT:
The importance of Early Years education is a high priority within St Lawrence’s. We believe that every child deserves the best possible start to their education, so that they can fulfil their full potential. Early Years lays the building blocks for children’s future success and school readiness.
Our school is in an area of high deprivation and the percentage of PP, EAL and SEND is well above average. Children generally enter our school significantly below age-related expectations and we aim to reduce the gap in attainment as early as possible through our ambitious curriculum that has high expectations for all pupils.
Our Early Years provision and curriculum intention is to provide children with the necessary characteristics for learning, procedural knowledge (skills) and declarative foundation knowledge to thrive in our school and beyond. Due to demographics of our school we provide children with a range of new and exciting experiences that add to their cultural capital.
We promote a holistic approach to developing the whole child through focusing on the prime areas of learning especially communication and language and vocabulary that we know is vital for future social and academic success, alongside specific areas of learning that develop core early reading, writing and mathematical knowledge and skills.
St Lawrence’s Early Years curriculum sets out the knowledge, understanding and skills that forms teaching and learning within our Early Years and ensures continuity and skills progression from Nursery to Reception and Year 1. The curriculum goes beyond statutory expectations which contributes to the readiness of our pupils to enter KS1 with the knowledge and skills to succeed.
IMPLEMENTATION:
At St Lawrence’s we ensure that our pupils achieve high standards of Good Levels of Development and are ready for the next stage in their learning by:
Acknowledging that every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
Supporting children to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
Promoting characteristics of effective learning; Play and exploring, active learning and creative and critical thinking through everyday practice.
Providing a safe and supportive learning environment in which the contribution of all children is valued.
Curriculum
Our curriculum has been carefully designed around the seven educational programmes:
Communication and Language
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Physical Development
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design
Our curriculum clearly identifies the declarative and procedural knowledge that form the basis for teaching and learning in our school and is planned to ensure progression between year groups and provide children with the foundation knowledge and skills for Year 1 and beyond.
The curriculum is planned sequentially around over-arching themes each half term and we adopt a cross-curricular immersive approach to teaching and learning that supports pupils understanding and retention of knowledge.
We focus on developing strong foundations in the prime areas of learning especially communication and language and vocabulary.
Prioritising Early reading, writing and mathematics to ensure that our children are ready for Year 1.
Providing children with new and exciting experiences that are linked to our curriculum and increase cultural capital.
Ensuring that our learning environment is exciting, engaging and enables children.
Through play our children explore and develop learning experiences, which help them make sense of the world.
Planning opportunities that build upon and extend children’s knowledge, experience and interests, and develop their self-esteem and confidence.
Using a wide range of teaching strategies based on children’s learning needs.
Providing a wide range of opportunities to motivate and support children and to help them learn effectively.
IMPACT:
Children in Early Years make good progress in the prime areas of learning so that they are ready for future academic learning.
Children are independent learners and confident following their own interests in class.
Children’s cultural capital is increased.
By the end of Reception, a high percentage of children make accelerated progress from baseline to reach a good level of development (GLD).
The majority of pupils are ready for Year 1.