Pen Mill Infant and Nursery Academy

EYFS

Our Vision

Pen Mill Promises For EYFS

Principle 1: To settle in, grow with confidence and love to learn.

At Pen Mill we promise to welcome you and say goodbye at every session. We promise to be there for you when you are feeling sad or angry and celebrate your successes! We promise to provide you with resources you will need to be an independent learner. We promise to provide you with an environment that is safe, stimulating and thoughtful. Most of all we promise to be there for you.

Principle 2: Be a confident communicator.

We promise to have a conversation with you at every session. We promise to introduce you to rich, exciting vocabulary. At Pen Mill we promise to show you how to be a good listener by using our ‘Show me Five’ approach.

Principle 3: To be able to be a good member of Pen Mill School.

At Pen Mill we promise to give you choices and consistent boundaries. We promise to treat each other with respect. We promise for you to have access to outside during every session to give you experiences of the natural world. We promise to show you how to be curious about the world around you.

Principle 4: To be healthy, take care of my body and keep active.

We promise to teach you to listen to your body and recognise when to eat, rest or play. We promise for you to have access to healthy food and water during the day. We will encourage you to join in with your care and hygiene routines. We promise you will be able to pour your own drink and eat with a knife and fork.

Principle 5: To love stories, nursery rhymes, number and develop a great imagination.

We promise to read you a story every day. We promise you will be able to retell stories and nursery rhymes by heart by the end of the EYFS. We promise you will treasure books and know how to look after them. We promise to give you access to role play experiences. We promise to give you access to explore number every day.

Introduction to EYFS

The first five year’s of your child’s life can be some of the most important. It is a privilege to play such a pivotal role in their education and experiences. During their time in our Nursery and Reception class, the emphasis is on play-based, active learning which lays the foundations for the rest of your child’s educational journey. We have carefully chosen topics which evoke your children’s imaginations and spark their interests. ‘Children’s voice’ is of utmost importance and we like to include their thoughts and wishes in the planning process too. Topics also need to be relatable and have relevance to our children. Our planning is themed around a text for several weeks where children’s communication and language skills are of vital importance. We have been working hard to ensure we deliver a broad and balanced curriculum for all. As a Team we have made promises to the children ‘Pen Mill Promises’ to ensure that we are providing our children with everything they need to grow to become successful independent learners.

Pen Mill’s EYFS curriculum shows clear progression within each of the 7 areas. We have devised progression of skills for Reception and Nursery.

All children are carefully assessed against each area and work towards achieving a Good Level of Development which means they have achieved each of the 3 Prime areas and Literacy and Math at the end of their Reception year.

The Areas of Learning

There are 7 areas of learning in the EYFS curriculum split into Prime and Specific areas with a total combined 17 assessment points across the 7 areas.

There are 3 Prime Areas. These are particularly important for building a foundation for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, forming relationships and thriving.

The 3 Prime Areas are known as:

Communication and language; Physical development and Personal, and Social and emotional development

There are 4 Specific Areas. These ensure the three prime areas are strengthened and applied.

The 4 Specific Areas are known as:

Literacy; Mathematics; Understanding the world and Expressive arts and design.

The Characteristics of Effective Learning

Alongside the 7 areas of learning, the EYFS curriculum aims to develop key effective learning characteristics for each child. These characteristics are defined as:

Playing and Exploring (including engaging with learning)

Our EYFS children are actively encouraged to find out and explore their environment. Activities are carefully designed so they are willing to try something new and have a go and have opportunities to play with resources that they are familiar with.

Active Learning (including motivation)

If a child is an active learner they are continuously trying new things and engaging with the learning environment they are in. They get involved with what is going on around them and concentrate on activities. They show enjoyment for what they are doing and enjoy the success when they have reach the outcome that they set out to achieve.

Creating and Thinking Critically

Through engaging with play based learning children are encouraged to develop their own ideas and are able to choose or select ways in which they want to do things. They make links and connections between contexts and scenarios .

Parent Partnership in the EYFS

We use Tapestry to communicate with parents and share children’s achievements and learning journeys.

Parents are encouraged to upload observations from home so school staff are able to build a picture of the whole child and can plan to meet needs accordingly.

Early reading starts with phonics.

At Pen Mill Infant and Nursery Academy, we use Read Write Inc as a Government approved systematic phonics program.

Children are taught phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (visual representations using letters). They are taught single phonemes and then taught to blend single sounds together to be able to read words. Children only have reading books when they can decode the sounds that they have learnt and then books are carefully matched to their decode ability. Over time and as their repertoire of phonemes increases the complexity of reading book/text increases until they are a fluent decoder.

Read Write Inc have produced some useful parent tutorials so parents can learn all about how to support their child as they learn with Read Write Inc. Phonics. the tutorials provide detailed ideas and advice on pronouncing pure sounds, blending, and digraphs (where a sound/phoneme is made up of 2 letters e.g ay)