Early Years Foundation Stage: Classes:Reception RW/DH, SC/DH 2020 - 2021

Reception Classes

As the Reception Team at Prestbury we pride ourselves on having a thorough knowledge of the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) curriculum and being passionate about the experiences and opportunities we can offer the children. Children develop quickly in the early years and we aim to capture their eagerness to learn in all areas of the curriculum.

Areas of Learning and Development

The EYFS has 7 areas of learning

There are 3 Prime Areas

1. Personal, Social and Emotional Development
2. Communication and Language
3. Physical Development

These areas are fundamental, work together and move through to support development in all other areas.

The 4 Specific Areas are

1. Literacy
2. Mathematics
3. Understanding the World
4. Expressive Arts and design

These include the essential skills and knowledge for the children to participate fully in society.

The teaching and learning in Reception is largely topic based. As children learn most effectively when they are engaged and enthusiastic most of our topics are generated from their ideas or interests. A very popular topic on dinosaurs followed a child’s family visit to the National History Museum in London. Having watched the children use material to make capes and become ‘superheroes’ this too developed into a topic encompassing all seven areas of the EYFS.

How do the children learn?

We have a mixture of child initiated learning and adult led activities based where possible on the topic. This allows the children to extend and develop their own learning whilst ensuring that new ideas and concepts are introduced and their learning moved to the next stage. Learning takes place both indoors and outdoors with the reception children having continuous access to the outdoor environment. As the children progress through the reception year more adult initiated activities are introduced in readiness for their transition into Year 1.

Parental Links

Our relationship with parents or carers is fundamental to our work in the EYFS. Staff are always in the playground before school or meetings can be arranged after school if appropriate. We nurture an environment of open communication and accessibility so that children can enjoy their reception year to the full.

We celebrate and record children’s achievements in their on line learning journey ‘Tapestry’ where we post photographs, comments and videos of the children. Parents have access to their child’s secure page and we encourage them to add their own observations and photographs from home.  We also use ‘Tapestry’ to inform parents about current topics or events in the classroom.

Children’s Progress

We closely monitor all children’s progress throughout the year and keep parents informed about individual successes and next steps. We also monitor our end of year results in line with National Data:

In July 2019 our GLD was 98%.

Number achieving exceeding in each of the areas in July 2019