EYFS

The Early Years Foundation Stage at Northwood Park prides itself on building the foundation for our children to learn, develop and prosper. Our EYFS curriculum focuses on 17 different areas which encompass aspects of Communication and Language, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development, Literacy, Maths, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design.

The curriculum in Early Years is designed to provide a broad and balanced curriculum that meets the needs of all pupils. It facilitates children with gaining the skills, knowledge and understanding they need, as they start out on their educational journey. Supporting them to show progression and grow into happy and successful individuals. We STRIVE to ensure every experience in school works towards their development and building upon their knowledge.

We believe children learn best when they are able to apply their skills in practical and in engaging ways, our curriculum allows for experiences which develop curiosity and allow the children to apply their learning. Children are encouraged to explore and contribute towards their own learning, encouraging independence. We also encourage children to share and explore their learning with their peers, working together in HARMONY to achieve greater outcomes and creativity by developing new relationships.

In the EYFS our planning and activities are focused around building upon children’s prior learning. We hope to INSPIRE children to be creative and develop their natural curiosity by exploring their own interests within the many areas of the curriculum. Our play based activities allow us to also plan creatively. Alongside our child initiated activities all children participate in daily Literacy, Mathematics and Topic based guided activities, in which they are assessed continually against their learning objectives for that week.

The aim of our curriculum is to develop and NUTURE a love of learning by:

Carefully planning sequences of activities that provide meaningful learning experiences, developing each child’s characteristics of learning.
Providing high quality interactions with adults that demonstrate and impact on the progress of all children.
Using high quality questioning and interactions to check understanding and address misconceptions.
Staff acting as role models to the children they teach in order for children to develop their own speaking and listening skills.
Carefully assessing, through various observations. These are used to inform the next steps of learning and meet individual needs.
Developing an effective and engaging environment that is set up so that children can access all areas of learning both inside and outside at any one time.
Providing activity starting points for child initiated activities that enhances children’s learning and impact on progress.
Allowing children to be successful in their attempts at an activity and using effective feedback to help facilitate next steps in learning.

We hope that every child leaves Reception as confident, happy and successful individuals with aspirational goals for their future, building upon the foundation they have developed and worked hard for within their first year of school. We hope to provide them with the skills that encourages them to have the ability to EXCEL in all that they do. The EYFS teaches children to have a positive and confident attitude towards their learning and teaches them to be curious and creative learners.