EYFS AT NORTHWAY

At Northway, we believe that the first years in education are a vital time for preparing children for their future learning journey. Children learn best when they are happy, secure and have a high sense of wellbeing. Staff place a strong emphasis on providing our children with a safe and friendly environment to develop in. Through play experiences and purposeful teaching, our children become confident to explore and enthusiastic to learn. Across the year, we explore our school values and a strong focus is placed on nurturing children to become resilient, confident and independent learners. This is achieved by the ethos we create using metacognition and teacher scaffolding. Personal, social and emotional development, alongside the teaching of communication and language skills, underpin the foundations for learning at Northway. We consider social skills and positive interactions with adults and peers crucial for children to be able to learn and thrive as they develop.

We build on children’s prior learning from previous settings and from home, to ensure that learning is meaningful, relevant and tailored to individual needs, interests and learning styles.  We strive to promote the holistic development of all children in order to build a solid and broad foundation for lifelong learning. Through progressive planning and teaching, we ensure that all our pupils are ‘school ready’ academically, personally, socially and emotionally.   

High expectations and aspirations are set for all children to achieve their full potential and to become competent in the basic skills of reading, writing and number, so that many possibilities are made available to them as they progress through the school.

During the EYFS practitioners prepare children for current and future learning by:

• ensuring excellence in teaching and learning delivered through a well-planned, rich and varied curriculum
• encouraging children to be self-motivated and to develop a positive attitude towards their learning
• promoting and nurturing individual liberty and respect for ourselves, others and the world around us
• developing global citizens so children leave us with an understanding of their rights and responsibilities within the wider world.

Our work in the EYFS enables our pupils to develop: 

• Communication skills
• A strong awareness of their own and others’ physical and mental health needs and how best to support these
• A strong sense of belonging
• A love of learning
• Independence
• Strong foundations in the basic skills.

The learning journey begins by weaving personal, social and emotional developmental skills into all that we do, in order to create pupils that are ready to learn. We cultivate an ethos where pupils are emboldened to ‘have a go’, we model how to embrace new challenges and guide children to celebrate their achievements and relish new goals. Self-belief and positive attitudes underpin our foundations for learning and from here we support all pupils to achieve their full potential. PSED is taught discretely and indirectly throughout the whole week, in the language we use, stories we read, assemblies, circle times, class attitudes and the values that we promote.

Developing a love of reading and the skills to be able to read, is a high priority in our EYFS. Carefully sequenced reading progression and systematic phonics teaching lies at the heart of our learning foundations. Daily writing sessions build on the knowledge acquired in reading and phonics, and through a range of high-quality texts, linked to our themes, the children begin to explore and develop a love of writing.

The exploration of number is planned for daily, in a series of progressive lessons, so that by the end of Reception, pupils are fluent with the value of numbers up to twenty and have strong mental recall of number bonds to ten, giving them the foundations to support their learning as they enter Year One and beyond.

We work closely with parents and carers to provide a personalised and supportive curriculum for each child.

Files to Download