EYFS Wrens | Grayswood CE Aided Primary School

Newsletters from our Head Teacher are emailed regularly to keep parents informed about events in our school and important dates.
'Friday Notes' can be accessed via the school website on Friday every week and will include information of particular relevance to your child’s class. There will be information about your child's learning from the week and there will be ideas for how you can help support learning at home as well.
Your first Class parent meeting will explain how we teach Phonics at Grayswood CE Primary School and how you will be able to support your child’s learning at home. We will follow this up with a Reading Presentation for all parents who would like to have further information for how we teach reading as children progress through the school, and also how we can foster a love of reading for children, both at school and at home.
We hold formal consultations in the Autumn and Spring terms, with afternoon and evening appointments available. But please remember we are always available to discuss any concerns you have at the end of the school day so please do not hesitate to come and see us.
Parents are very welcome in school but are required to have online checks before they will be able to help in school We delay having parent helpers in our classroom until the spring term, however we would warmly welcome volunteers to hear readers in the afternoons, so please do contact the school office if you would be interested in this. Thank you.

“Our school is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people,
and expects all staff and volunteers to demonstrably share this commitment”.

The Early Years Curriculum

In the Early Years, all teaching is based on developing the 'whole child'. Our curriculum is split into the 2 main areas: The Prime Areas and the Specific Areas.

The Prime Areas involve:

PSED: Making Relationships, self confidence and self awareness, managing feelings and behaviour.

Communication and Language: Listening and attention, Understanding and Speaking

Physical Development: Moving and handling, Health and Self care

The Specific Areas include:

Literacy: Reading, Writing,

Maths: Number, Shape, Space and Measure

Understanding of the World: People and Communities, The World, Technology.

Expressive Arts and Design: Exploring and using materials and Being Imaginative

Please see below for end of year expectations in EYFS, which will give more information on these areas.

What a day in EYFS looks like at Grayswood

Children begin the day with formal teaching of Phonics and then children are encouraged to "choose their learning" to apply and develop taught skills across all areas of learning. Children are encouraged to be independent and have several daily 'jobs' that they must do before the end of the day. This may be a phonics or Maths task or something else, depending on the plan for the day. They also have a 'snack' bar, where they can help themselves to fruit as long as they sit down nicely with it and then remove their name card once they have had it. As the year goes on, children are encouraged to 'pay' for their fruit, using pretend money, to reinforce money skills and to put their Maths into practice. Children also have whole class teacher inputs for Maths daily. In the afternoon, they generally have a Topic or RE based input or a PSED circle time. PE is also taught weekly as a whole class activity. For the rest of the time, activities are put out though 'continuous provision' for the children to use to further their learning. The classroom and outdoor areas are split into areas of learning, to include areas such as an Art area and a Writing area etc. Open ended activities are left for the children to explore as well as often a Maths activity from the previous day's taught activity, to see how well the children can remember what was taught and develop in confidence with the activity the following day. Children 'free-flow' around these activities and adults 'dip in' and extend their learning through their play. The children are trained to know where the resources are kept and everything is labelled so that they can also choose activities for themselves which may not have been set up. This is called "child initiated" learning. the children may choose to construct a large fire engine, for example, outside, which they have decided to do themselves. We would then 'dip in' and extend their learning through developing language in role play, getting involved and modelling speaking, or perhaps encouraging them to make signs and posters for their constructions, using their sound knowledge to write words and giving their writing a purpose.

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Teaching in the EYFS at Grayswood is carefully planned with the Characteristics of Effective Learning in mind. These are:

Playing and Exploring (engagement)

Finding out and exploring

Playing with what they know

Being willing to ‘have a go’

Active Learning (motivation)

Being involved and concentrating

Keeping on trying

Enjoying achieving what they set out to do

Creating and Thinking Critically (thinking)

Having their own ideas

Making links

Choosing ways to do things

We are interested in the ways in which children learn and are constantly looking out for signs of the children demonstrating the above things in their play.

Planning for the EYFS

We follow Development Matters for our planning and Letters and Sounds for our Phonics teaching, using the Jolly Phonics resources. There of course are things that we have got to teach the children to enable them to achieve a Good Level of Development at the end of the Summer term and these are carefully planned for and differentiated, depending on the stage each child is working at. Provision is carefully planned so that the children don't get bored. Resources are rotated and challenges are set up for the children on a weekly basis. We do feel it is hugely important to involve our children with our planning in the EYFS and we like to teach our key objectives through themes and topics that are relevant to them. We talk to the children about their interests at home visits in September and children bring in special boxes during their first days at school, which feature things that are of importance and interest to them.

For our RE planning, we follow the Guildford Diocesan guidelines. Please see the RE Curriculum Page for more information about this. We enjoy having special theme days for religious festivals and celebrations around the world. We enjoy cooking and tasting different flavours from different cultures. We learn through dance, drama and music and through observing and discussing a wide range of resources and artefacts.