EYFS

St. Paul’s Catholic Primary School – EYFS Curriculum

At St. Paul’s Catholic Primary School, our delivery of the EYFS curriculum aims to provide a variety of opportunities for our children to develop as independent, resourceful, and positive learners, working in partnership with their peers. We want our children to have a desire to learn new things and challenge themselves each day. We work with the children to develop their independent learning skills and their approach to challenge.

Intent: 

At St. Paul’s Catholic Primary School we recognise that every child is unique, and we embrace this. We aspire for excellence across the EYFS and want all children to achieve their full potential. We work closely with our parents and carers to provide positive and engaging learning experiences because it is extremely important that the children feel excited, engaged, and encouraged throughout their learning journey. We work with our parents and carers to foster a strong relationship.

In particular, Catholic Social Teaching, is weaved throughout all other subjects. It is vital that our children can articulate the connection between Jesus' teaching and doing good deeds. We use the CAFOD Catholic Social Teaching resources and the animal mascots to support the children’s understanding of principles.

As a team, we create an indoor and outdoor learning environment that inspires the children to investigate, question and challenge themselves. The children can explore the different areas throughout the day and access a wide range of continuous provision opportunities incorporating sensory, physical, writing, number work and creative role play activities. We want to provide our children with every opportunity to fulfil their potential and work on reaching the Early Learning Goals at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage and ensure that the children make, at least, good progress from their initial starting points. With the incremental challenge the children face as they move into KS1, we support this transition by ensuring our children leave us ready and excited to take on new challenges. We actively support our children throughout their final term in Reception with transition opportunities to aid their move into KS1.

Implementation:

Within the EYFS at St Paul’s Catholic Primary School, we follow the Early Years Statutory Framework, provided by the Department for Education (DFE). We value inclusion, ‘journeying together the St. Paul’s way’. The EYFS framework sets out the requirement for learning and development within the EYFS and focuses on prime and specific areas.

These are broken down into seven areas of the EYFS Curriculum –

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Communication and Language

Physical Development

Literacy

Mathematics

Understanding the World

Expressive Arts and Design

These areas are used in our planning for the children’s learning and their activities. Planning is flexible to meet the needs and interests of our children. Ultimately our curriculum and topics are centered on the children. We always encourage active learning and aim to develop the learning characteristics that will support lifelong learning. At St. Paul’s Catholic Primary School we want all our children to -

●                 Learn actively – Where children try their best and persevere even when they face challenges.

●                 Play and explore – Children investigate and experience things and are willing to ‘have a go’

●                 Create and think critically – Children develop their own ideas both independently and in collaboration with others.

The children engage in independent learning opportunities, as well as adult guided group work. We use questioning to encourage the children to query the world around them and through their own exploration they develop their independence, creativity, and problem-solving skills. Throughout the day the children have a range of opportunities to work collaboratively, independently and with members of staff.

Impact:

We work hard to ensure that all the children’s progress across the EYFS curriculum is good or better, based on their various starting points. Evidence and observations of the children’s progress is recorded via Tapestry, online learning journeys or class floor books. We use our observations of the children to make formative assessments of their attainment and to inform future planning and build upon the children’s current knowledge. Our summative assessments look at children’s attainment in relation to age related expectations, taken from the Development Matters. The impact of our curriculum can be measured by the way in which our children are inspired and excited about their learning. We work in partnership to ensure our children develop into confident and positive learners, who are excited by new challenges and not put off by difficulty. We endeavour to ensure that our children leave the EYFS ready to move with confidence into KS1 and their lifelong learning journey.