EYFS Information
Our Philosophy and Aims
Our philosophy at Truro Learning Academy is 'Aspire to Achieve.' We want all of our children to receive the best possible start in life, and to achieve academically, socially and personally. We embed this throughout everything we do in the Early Years Foundation Stage. We encourage and support our children to be engaged, motivated and resilient learners.
To facilitate this, we have designed a progressive, sequential and challenging curriculum for our Early Years pupils. We have aligned learning for pupils of all ages to form a single EYFS curriculum, broken down by key developmental stage, which ensures that our children have breath and progression in learning right from the start of their EYFS journey.
Our approach to learning in the Early Years covers a mixture of child-led learning and adult-directed activities. We allow our children to take some ownership of their own learning through our continuous provision, while also guiding their learning through more formal inputs and activities led by skilled practitioners. This gives our children the independence and skills they need to be well prepared for learning in our Year 1 class.
Continuous provision refers to the resources which are consistently on offer throughout the year in our Early Years classroom. These resources are carefully planned to meet the learning needs and interests of our pupils. Our children have access to high quality, well organised resources which provide them with opportunities to revisit and extend their learning. We regularly add enhancements and provocations to our continuous provision, which act as a stimulus for new learning and ideas.
In the Early Years, our planning is flexible, and we are often guided by our children's needs and interests. We endeavour to provide opportunities to meet the needs and interests of all of our children through our planning and continuous provision.
There are seven key areas of learning in the EYFS, which consists of three prime areas and four specific areas. The three prime areas are Communication and Language, Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Physical Development. The four specific areas of learning are Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design. Please see further details of our intent and implementation in each of the areas of learning below, along with our comprehensive long term planning.
Communication and Language
Communication and language sits right at the heart of our Early Years curriculum. We want our children to learn a wide vocabulary and use this confidently to participate in extended conversations with adults and peers. We want our children to learn to communicate with confidence in 1:1, small group and whole class scenarios, understanding the value of both speaking and listening. We want our children to learn to be fascinated by books, stories, songs and rhymes, listening to a wide range of texts, and knowing many key stories by heart.
We develop children’s vocabulary and communication skills through high-quality interactions every day. We use the ShREC approach (EEF) as a basis on which our interactions are modelled. Practitioners use their professional judgement to carefully target their interactions such that vocabulary and communication gaps between pupils are minimized as much as possible. Practitioners model careful listening to children daily.
Children read and discuss a wide variety of stories each week, including weekly key texts for each age group, with carefully selected focus vocabulary to extend our pupil’s vocabulary further. Practitioners re-read stories regularly to build familiarity and enjoyment, resulting in children knowing many stories by heart by the time they leave EYFS. Children sing songs daily within the setting, as well as learning weekly focus rhymes to ensure all of our children know a broad range of songs and rhymes by the end of their EYFS journey. Our focus texts and rhymes are mapped out along with key maths texts and recommended reads in our reading spine below.
Children’s communication and language development is screened using the Wellcomm toolkit within their first 6 weeks at our setting. Children not making expected progress in communication and language for their age receive twice weekly communication and language interventions through the Wellcomm toolkit. Practitioners are also mindful of children’s targets on the Wellcomm scheme in their interactions with these children.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
At Truro Learning Academy, we want our children to learn to be kind, respectful and resilient learners, ready to access the national curriculum. We want our children to have confidence in their academic, social, and personal abilities and feel proud of what they achieve. We want our children to learn to understand, communicate and manage their feelings, and to use these skills to build supportive and respectful relationships with their peers. We want our children to speak freely about their emotions with confidence and to learn the basic skills necessary to have a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
We develop children’s personal, social, and emotional development every day through the warm, positive relationships we form with the children in our care. All children have a key person, which allows practitioners to deepen these relationships further with their key children. Practitioners verbalise the emotions and social dilemmas which children experience, which supports children in overcoming these. Practitioners also model self-regulation strategies and positive social behaviours when interacting with children, helping them to learn to navigate their emotions and the social world.
Alongside this, the PSHE scheme of learning ‘SCARF’ is used throughout the school. Children engage in a short, practical, age-appropriate input each week, covering a wide range of topics to support their learning in personal, social, and emotional development. Additionally, the ‘WE Thinkers’ social learning scheme is used in the children’s reception year. This aims to explicitly teach children social skills which they need to navigate the social world. Children in reception engage in a short, practical, age-appropriate input each week.
Lead practitioners plan opportunities to teach children explicitly about healthy and balanced lifestyles, as well as modelling this through a carefully thought-out daily routine, for example offering fruit at snack time and encouraging regular physical activity within the setting.
Physical Development
Physical Development is a key priority across our Early Years classes. We want our children to develop the confidence and competence required to play and move energetically. We want our children to learn the fundamental skills required to participate in and enjoy a wide range of sports and physical activities in a safe way. We want our children to enjoy being physically active and to create and play games regularly. We want our children to learn independence in daily routines and play, being able to manipulate objects of all sizes to reach their desired goals. We want our children to learn to manipulate a wide range of small tools and to eventually develop a well refined pencil grip and pencil control.
We develop our children’s physical development through the careful planning of our EYFS environments, which ensures that children have access to a range of large- and small-scale resources, as well as continual access to a wide range of tools. Practitioners use their professional judgement to plan enhancements and provocations targeted at furthering the physical development needs and interests of our children, as well as providing practice of fundamental skills. Our provision benefits from our own dedicated outdoor learning environment, as well as a dedicated field. This encourages our children to be physically active in their daily child-initiated learning within our continuous provision. Practitioners encourage children to be active and play games throughout their child-initiated play. Children also receive explicit instruction on tool use and pencil grip from key practitioners, as well as modelling and instruction of fundamental physical skills.
Nursery-aged children experience direct instruction in weekly sessions from the ‘Healthy Movers’ scheme designed by the Youth Sport Trust, to support their physical development and promote enjoyment in physical activity right from the start of their EYFS journey. Children in the reception year access direct instruction through our bespoke TLA P.E. curriculum, designed to teach children the fundamental skills required to access a range of physical activity and sport. Children in the Early Years also have access to a set of balance bikes which they use weekly on our school mountain bike track which we have constant access to on site. Children learn the fundamentals of riding a bike throughout the Early Years, enabling them to progress onto our set of larger bikes in later year groups.
Literacy
We want our children to learn not just reading skills but also the enjoyment of literature. We want to enable our children to become lifelong, confident readers. We want our children to play with stories, talk about them, and recite them for their own enjoyment. We aim for our children to develop fluent and legible handwriting and the ability to spell and write independently in a wide range of contexts. We aim for our children to have confidence in their writing ability and to begin to develop the stamina and skills required for more extended writing later on in school.
We making reading a priority across our EYFS unit. We plan the stories and rhymes which our children are exposed to, and think carefully about which texts we select on our reading spine. We focus on children being exposed to classic stories and rhymes during our Early Years, as well as repetitive and topic-related texts. We create inviting book corners in our provision to promote interaction with stories and books for all of our children, as well as ensuring that high-quality texts are constantly available across all areas of the provision, to encourage further engagement. We re-read stories regularly with our pupils so that our children know our chosen texts really well, enabling them to recite and play with the story independently. Our practitioners promote discussion about stories, and we see this as being as valuable as the reading of the story itself, as well as discussion about the features of texts, such as the way the pages turn and naming the parts of a book. We schedule specific times in the day for whole class story and rhyme times, ensuring that this is not rushed and is given the time and attention that this deserves.
Right from the start of nursery, our children receive daily phonological awareness inputs from our highly-skilled practitioners. We follow a progressive phonological awareness scheme, allowing children to build on their skills each half term. We ensure that our sessions are engaging, interactive and age-appropriate. In the summer term before starting Reception, our nursery children are exposed to the single-letter sounds as part of the Read Write Inc Nursery phonics scheme. In our experience, this prepares our children well for making a flying start to reading in Reception class. From the first day of Reception, our children take part in daily Read Write Inc phonics sessions. This comprises learning graphemes, oral phonological skills, and sight vocabulary. During these sessions children are also explicitly shown how to apply their developing skills to their writing. Children are assessed half-termly and are grouped in accordance with their individual needs. Children take home books matched to the level at which they are currently reading and are expected to read at home at least five times per week. Children also have weekly phonics videos sent home to provide extra support. Children in Reception play daily Fred games to improve oral blending, and children who need extra support receive daily one to one tutoring sessions with a phonics teacher.
Mark making and writing are promoted throughout our setting, with resources available to engage in this throughout the provision. Our practitioners model tripod pencil grips and accurate letter formation to our children regularly. In Reception, children learn to write more formally using a method called ‘Finger fit’. This involves the children completing a craft activity related to their focus high-quality text, and then writing a simple sentence about the text. Children are encouraged to write as independently as possible. In Reception, children also use the Talk for Writing scheme to support storytelling skills for a range of carefully selected high-quality texts. Reception class also use the Nelson handwriting scheme to promote accurate letter formation right from the start of school.
Maths
We want our children to develop a love of maths and ensure that they feel successful and confident when learning in mathematics. We want our children to develop a firm foundation in number facts, to enable them to become proficient in the fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills they need later on in school. We aim for our children to leave the EYFS having a deep understanding of number to 10, and being able to count beyond this. We aim for our children to feel confident with a range of early mathematical concepts including sharing, counting, spatial reasoning and pattern.
We follow schemes specific to the early years to support the delivery of maths in our EYFS unit. In nursery, we use ‘Master the Curriculum’ to support our maths planning, and in Reception we use ‘White Rose’. These schemes build on each other well with a clear progression, and prepare children well for mathematics in Year 1 and beyond. We adapt the content of these schemes as necessary to provide appropriate challenge for our children.
Maths is taught through a mixture of adult-directed inputs, small group activities and child-initiated learning within our continuous provision. Our provision is carefully planned such that our open-ended resources allow children to extend their learning in all areas of mathematics in all areas of our provision. Our highly-skilled practitioners have a deep understanding of early mathematics and support and extend our pupil’s early mathematics skills through their interactions in the provision. In Reception, early number skills are recapped at the start of all adult-directed inputs using the interactive ‘number sense’ scheme.
Understanding the World
We want our children to have a deep, experience-based understanding of the world around them. We want our children to learn to be curious about and interested in all aspects of the world around them, and to learn and use new vocabulary to verbalise these ideas. We strive for our children to have strong foundations in science, geography, history, religious education, computing and outdoor learning, providing them with the knowledge and skills they need to achieve success in the national curriculum in Year 1 and beyond.
Our practitioners make building relationships with children and their families a priority. We encourage parents to communicate regularly with their child’s key person, and promote sharing of significant events both verbally and on Tapestry. Where appropriate, children are encouraged to share these experiences with staff and peers, and practitioners plan enhancements and provocations informed by these experiences to extend learning. We plan opportunities for families to enter our setting and interact with staff and their children to deepen these relationships further.
Our lead practitioners plan regular experience-based learning opportunities for our children each half term, feeding off of the interests of the children wherever possible. Our intended curriculum content is informed by knowledge and skills progression in years 1-6 in science, geography, history, religious education, computing and outdoor learning, working with subject leaders to identify the key knowledge and skills which will build the foundations for our children in each subject. We ensure that the children have daily experiences in nature, as well as time in our dedicated whole-school outdoor learning space.
Our practitioners use their interactions with children in the provision to extend and deepen children’s natural curiosities about the world. We prioritise building vocabulary in all of our interactions, and ensure that we use correct language to describe religions, languages, names and special events
Expressive Arts and Design
We want our children to leave the EYFS feeling confident in exploring the full extent of their imagination, and to have accessed a wide-range of experience-based learning with a range of media and materials. We want our children to regularly explore endless possibilities when creating. We want our children to learn to use the creative arts as a medium of expressing their own thoughts, feelings and ideas. Moreover, we want our children to feel confident when expressing themselves, and to feel that all of their expressions are valid and respected. We want our children to learn to value and respect the creative arts, and to be interested and inspired by live and recorded performances in the creative arts. We want our children to learn the foundation skills required to achieve success in the art, design and technology and music curriculums in year 1 and beyond.
Our children have constant access to a wide range of media and materials which is specifically planned as part of our continuous provision, both indoors and outdoors. This is built upon across the year according to the children’s learning needs and interests. Our highly-skilled practitioners use their professional judgement to build on the provision and add enhancements and provocations as necessary. Our practitioners take time to teach each of the resources on offer to our children, and model a wide range of possibilities with each resource. Our practitioners also use the ShREC approach to extend and narrate learning within the creative arts in their daily interactions with our children. Our approach to expressive art and design is experience-led as opposed to outcome-led.
In addition to our continuous provision and interactions, children are regularly exposed to a wide range of creative arts. This includes music from a wide range of composers through ‘composer of the month’, performance art through our connections with the Hall for Cornwall, and a variety of styles of art and design. Our children have many opportunities to participate in performance art, such as all EYFS children participating in our annual ‘World Nursery Rhyme Week’ performance, as well as the school nativity play.
In art, we have isolated the foundational skills required to succeed in art across our school curriculum, and have carefully selected six foundation projects each for nursery and reception which build up the skills required for Access Art projects in Years 1-6. More details of these can be found in our art planning documents.
In design and technology, we have explored the fundamental concepts required to succeed in our curriculum. We plan at least one cooking experience each half term, in which the children slowly understand what a recipe is and how this can be followed, building vocabulary and skills along the way. Our practitioners ensure that they provide opportunities for and actively encourage children to think carefully about their creations prior to the ‘making’ stage of their play. Each classroom has a designated ‘workshop area’ and there are further opportunities for design and creativity across the provision. Children often use design sheets as part of their play, and our practitioners actively encourage verbal planning and subject-specific language use. Children learn to evaluate and reflect on their learning from an early age through their interactions with practitioners.
In music, we have isolated foundation concepts which children should be exposed to in order to experience success in our school music curriculum from Years 1-6. This begins with daily rhyme times for all of our EYFS children, which incorporates early music skills such as listening to the songs, and playing with the songs. We have carefully selected 20 key nursery rhymes which we want our children to know really well by the end of Reception. We send these home and repeat each rhyme twice a year. In Reception, children are exposed to a further 20 songs which support exposure to a wide range of basic music theory such as pulse, rhythm and tempo.
