Intent

At Scientia Academy, our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum is designed to ensure a secure foundation is laid for future learning. Our children are exposed to a wide range of learning opportunities that capture their interest and imaginations. Our curriculum is ambitious and designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with Special Educational Needs and/or disabilities (SEND) the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. At the end of EYFS, we expect our children to leave us as happy, confident and skillful communicators who are curious about the world around them. Every child is recognised as a unique individual and we celebrate and welcome differences within our school community.

We intend:

• To work in partnership with parents and carers to encourage independent, happy learners who thrive in school and reach their full potential from their various starting point.
• To develop a unique child promoting resilient, confident, cooperative, curious and independent learners who want to discover the world around them.
• To create an indoor and outdoor environment which supports learning through play and first hand experiences. We want our children to be excited by the real world and develop their imagination.
• To provide a fully inclusive curriculum that embraces the rich and varied culture of our community.
• To provide a structured curriculum which builds knowledge and skills in all of our areas of learning and provide opportunities for children to practise and embed these through our continuous provision.
• To encourage children to become skillful communicators, who connect with others through language and play, ensuring that they play and learn in a vocabulary rich environment.
• To ensure that all children have the opportunity to be challenged and have access to challenge during their independent learning.

Implementation

At Scientia Academy, we follow the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, September 2021. We have designed our progressive curriculum around this framework and the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) which are required to be achieved at the end of the school year. Our curriculum has been carefully considered and planned to include progressive steps throughout the year in order that all children achieve the statutory required ELG. Our curriculum meets the needs of all of our children in EYFS, including children with Special Educational Needs and those who are disadvantaged. Many of our children have already started their learning through the Foundation Stage in our own Nursery or with other providers.  As a result, we find out about the previous learning and experiences they have had both at home and preschool/nursery. This information is then used to create our curriculum.

Our curriculum is designed to be child-centred and is based upon first hand experiences. Our children learn through doing. It is very important to us that we spend time getting to know each child’s individual interests.

We have 7 areas to our EYFS curriculum. The children will learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate understanding through these. They are:

• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design.

In EYFS we use the process of: interaction, observation, assessment and planning in an environment where every child can thrive. We ensure activities support the Characteristics of Effective Learning to ensure that we take account of individual learning behaviours.

These are:

Playing and Exploring – children investigate and experience things, and have a go;

Active Learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements;

Creating and Thinking Critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas and develop strategies for doing things.

We take into account the Characteristics of Effective Learning and ensure that we provide an enabling environment that balances child led and adult guided provision.

Continuous Provision is at the heart of our EYFS curriculum. Our Continuous Provision offers a balance of child initiated play as well as other more structured activities. Our continuous provision also provides opportunities for children to practise and apply knowledge and skills previously taught.   

Children in EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes places both indoors and outdoors. Once a week, our children participate in an afternoon of Forest School. We aspire to develop our children’s confidence and self-esteem via hands-on learning experiences in our forest school area. Our sessions support our children’s wellbeing by providing and implementing positive, outdoor, child-centred experiences in a natural setting. We ensure that our children learn how to work as a team, build their resilience, confidence, friendships and many more transferable skills. Our activities are planned with the Early Years Framework in mind. The ethos of Forest School is based on a respect for children and their capacity to initiate, investigate and maintain curiosity in the world around them.

Impact

Our children have different starting points in their learning journey. Despite this, all children will make good progress academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically. Measuring and monitoring the impact of our curriculum at Scientia Academy is essential. The impact of our curriculum can be measured by the way in which our children are inspired and excited about their learning. We work to ensure our children develop into happy, resilient, confident, cooperative, curious and independent learners who are excited by new challenges and not put off by difficulty. Knowledge, understanding and skills will be secured and embedded so that our children are fully prepared to begin their KS1 phase at the end of the school year and their lifelong learning journey.