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Early Years

Welcome to the Foundation Stage (Year R)

At Birchington CE Primary School, our children in Reception year follow the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage).

Children follow the EYFS framework from birth to 5 years old and all professionals (nurseries, child-minders, teachers etc) use this framework to plan for children’s next steps and support their holistic development.

The EYFS is a very important stage for children as it helps prepare them for more formal teaching and lifelong learning. Children’s early years’ experience should be a happy, active, exciting, fun and safe time which enables every individual child to achieve their full potential.

Here at Birchington, we aim to ensure that all children learn by ‘doing’ and leave their Reception year with a love of learning and feeling safe and excited by the opportunities that learning offers.

The EYFS ensures that children learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development:

There are 3 prime areas which are:

Communication and Language
Physical Development
Personal, Social and Emotional development

The Prime areas help children to develop skills in 4 specific areas.

These are:

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the world
Expressive arts and design

The 7 areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities. The teachers and teaching assistants make sure the activities are suited to each child’s needs. Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and out. We sustain high standards of achievement through careful planning, continuous assessment and tracking of children’s learning. This ongoing process enables us to build a picture of all aspects of each child's development. We believe in creating a colourful, rich, challenging and fun learning environment. If children are happy they will want to learn. We have high expectations for all our children and do everything possible to allow them to fulfil their potential.

We believe that children should have regular access to outside learning opportunities. Our use of the outdoor environment compliments and extends the learning which takes place indoors. The outside environment can offer unique opportunities for learning and the children have more space to move freely which is crucial for their physical development, social and emotional development. At Birchington we have a secure designated outdoor area for our Reception children. Each day there will be a variety of activities set up outside for the children to explore and develop their learning. The areas will be well resourced and there will be systems in place ensuring equal access for all children to this area. The children also have supervised access to other outdoor facilities on the school site including the forest area, playing field and large playground. This space is ideal for children to use our bikes and trikes, balancing equipment and our range of PE equipment which includes bats, balls and skipping ropes.

In Reception we provide lots of opportunities for these experiences such as seasonal walks, visitors from the community, a trip to a wildlife centre and our local parish church.

Our Aims:

To provide a secure, caring and stimulating environment
To ensure that all children are valued
To build on what the child already knows and to encourage a positive attitude and enjoyment of learning.
To provide a range of opportunities to learn through direct first-hand experience and active exploration, in the classroom and outdoors, using a variety of equipment and materials.
To value the role families can play and work together in partnership.

How do we do this?

We want children to be engaged in the learning process and for their learning to be relevant and purposeful. Therefore, our philosophy is centred around the notion that children learn best by doing. We believe that play, both indoors and outdoors, is an ideal vehicle for young children’s learning. Play helps children to be challenged in their thinking and helps them to practice and rehearse skills and to be motivated in their learning. Children are inquisitive and curious and we wish to build upon this in a positive and enjoyable manner.

Learning opportunities are developed:

Through play which is structured at times to enable new skills to develop
Through children’s interests noted by staff and suggestions from parents
Through allowing children to make their own decisions and choices
Through providing a range of stimulating resources that children are encouraged to explore freely and through direction from staff
Through incorporating drama and role-play into sessions
Through catering for different learning styles and needs so that all children are engaged.
Through offering very high quality pastoral care so that children feel confident, valued secure.

We also have designated parent-teacher meetings twice a year and write a full end of year report which is sent home to parents in July.

Our parents are invited to share their child’s experiences at home with us at school via the ‘Tapestry’ app. We open this journal up to parents/carers which allows them to view and comment on their children’s adventures and achievements in school. Parents/carers are also able to add photographs/information to their child’s journal. This enables us to celebrate a child’s achievements at home as well as school.

We welcome parental support at school and have a number of volunteers who either read regularly or play games with our Reception children.

We have an excellent Pastoral team who are on hand to support any families in their children’s learning and wellbeing both at home and at school. Our Wellbeing team - Sarah Cooper, Ellie Chapman and Miss Brock - provide care and provision for all our families and their children.

Children will Special Educational Needs are supporting by both our Inclusion Leader, Mrs Downs. Parents will have regular meetings with the SEN department, class teachers and Phase Leader to discuss their child’s progress and the ways that we are supporting them in the school. We work closely with external agencies to achieve the very best possible outcomes for our children.

At Birchington CE Primary School, we work hard to develop an active partnership with parents where we build and nurture relationships and often draw them in through social events. We see the parents of children at our school as partners and we greatly value the contribution that parents make to their children’s learning and continual development. We aim to work in partnership with parents even before their children start their learning journey at Birchington by talking to them about their children and their needs at our open evening and during our new Rising 5s sessions in Term 6.

One evening in June before the children start with us in Reception, we invite all parents into school for our yearly ‘New Entrants Meeting’. They have the opportunity to meet the Reception teachers and Teaching Assistants as well as find out about the transition process to Year R. This is a really relaxed yet informative opportunity for parents to understand what they might expect from the first year of their children’s school lives. Each family receives a learning pack so they can support their children’s learning at home.

Our successful Rising 5s programme is held over the last few weeks of term, offering parents and their children two opportunities to come into school for up to an hour at a time. The children will be able to take part in an activity with their new teacher and other children that will be in their new class and for the parents to take part in a workshop centred around school readiness.

Through our ‘open door’ ethos parents have the opportunity to talk to key members of staff as their child enters school in the morning or the class teacher at the end of the day. Appointments can also be made to see class teachers and members of the Senior Leadership Team through the school office.

We also send out weekly newsletters informing families of events and learning that will take place during the forthcoming term.

We invite our Year R parents into school at least once a term to celebrate learning with us through 'Come and See' sessions. This may be a celebration assembly where the children share what they have learned, perhaps sing some songs and have out on display their writing or creative pieces of art. We also invite families to our Nativity at Christmas time, to our Sports Day and other celebrations throughout the year.