Intent
Caring Learning Achieving
At Spring Gardens Primary School, we aim to provide a secure and caring environment where children can learn and achieve their full potential in a relaxed and happy atmosphere.
A child’s early years at school are extremely important. They lay the foundations for all future learning and influence attitudes to education. Children develop rapidly during this time including physically, emotionally, intellectually and socially and it is our aim to provide children with an progressive, sequential, engaging curriculum that enables them to develop the skills they require to be ready for the National Curriculum at year one.
We want our children to become, confident, resilient, independent learners who are willing to have a go, embrace new experiences and manage risks.
Implementation
The Spring Gardens Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum is based upon The Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework (October 24) which sets out the standards for learning, development and care from birth to five.
Our curriculum is based upon a progressive model. Children learn new skills and knowledge over time that build upon prior learning. Opportunities to revisit and embed key skills and knowledge is built into the curriculum. Opportunities to recall prior learning and build on it, enable children to transfer knowledge to their long term memory and begin to make links within their learning.
The progression grids outline the knowledge and skills that we expect children to accomplish, in the seven areas of learning, in order to meet the Early Learning Goals at the end of the Foundation Stage. Careful consideration will be given to children who require additional support in working through the curriculum. Individual needs will form the basis of a child’s learning experience. We endeavour to ensure that all children (including the disadvantaged, vulnerable and SEND) gain the essential knowledge and skills (cultural capital) required for success.
Children’s progress is rigorously tracked and monitored. Interventions are swiftly put into place for those who are a risk of falling behind. Post pandemic, we invested in Launch pad for Literacy, and this is being used to identify barriers to learning and put strategies in place to address these. In addition we are quick to seek support for those who will require additional support, for example speech and language referrals. We use a structured phonics scheme, Sounds-Write, from Reception onwards. Prior to this, in Nursery, we teach foundations for phonics to ensure the underlying skills necessary for Sounds-Write are taught.
We have curriculum progression grids for each of:-
The Seven Areas of Learning
| The Prime Areas | The Specific Areas |
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In addition the characteristics of effective Learning are woven through our curriculum.
Playing and Exploring
- Children investigate and experience things.
- Children have a go.
Active Learning
- Children concentrate
- Children keep trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy achievements
Creating and thinking critically
- Children have and develop their own ideas.
- Children make links between ideas
- Children develop strategies for doing things.
Whilst our curriculum is themed half termly and follows our progressive model. It is still flexible enough to incorporate children’s interests and fascinations.
Impact
We know that our curriculum is successfully enabling children to gain knowledge, skills and understanding. We can see this when spending time with children in our learning environments. Children are busy, engaged, happy to communicate their ideas and share their learning. We can see the vocabulary that we are teaching being used in the children’s independent play. New skills being taught are being transferred and evidenced in children’s independent activities. Children are able to make links with previous learning. Children become more resilient, they attempt new activities with confidence, and practise newly learnt skills “I can do this now!”
We track children’s progress carefully throughout each term and our data analysis enables us to see the progress made from children’s starting points. We are able to quickly identify children who require extra support and plan strategies to address this. We endeavour to narrow any gaps that occur between pupil groups and this is monitored closely. Steps to address these are put in place swiftly.