Early Years Foundation stage

Early Years Foundation Stage

Our Nursery and Reception classes follow the The Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. The Early Years Foundation Stage is the curriculum your child follows from birth until the end of their Reception year in school. The Early Years curriculum is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils. It facilitates them to gain the skills, knowledge and understanding, as they start out on their educational journey, supporting them to progress from their individual starting points and preparing them for the next stage of their education.

Our Early Years Approach:

At East Wichel we ensure learning opportunities that develop children's curiosity, motivation and critical thinking skills along with developing our school values of love, integrity, aspiration, appreciation and community. We work hard to provide children with a welcoming and rich learning environment that allows us to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum through play.

Did you know that the Nordic countries are consistently ranked at the top of the World Happiness charts year on year? Many put that down to their approach to living known as Hygge (pronounced ‘hue guh’). Put simply, Hygge is a Danish attitude to life that focuses on living in the moment and feeling the joy there is in everyday routines and activities. It could be the togetherness you enjoy as you come together as a family, or the cosy warmth you feel as you’re sat on the sofa reading a book next to the crackling fire while it’s snowing outside.

At East Wichel we have adopted the 'Hygge' approach. We offer the warmest of welcomes, with a focus on love, joy, wellbeing and happiness in nature and we are currently in the process of working towards a Hygge Accreditation.

We support the children to develop fundamental skills,  knowledge and understanding through offering a range of experiences including weekly local walks, cooking, visitors and trips. We believe that children learn best when their play is child-led, creative, messy and involves the outdoors, therefore we provide the children with lots of different experiences and mediums for the children to play with. 

Our Maths is taught through daily Maths sessions. We incorporate lots of songs and movement into our daily Maths and we revise learning daily to ensure learning is stored in long-term memory. 

Our phonics is taught through the Read Write Inc scheme of work. Where we teach sounds along with the rhyme to ensure learning is enjoyable and memorable. We start with set 1 sounds and develop on to set 2 and 3 sounds throughout the academic year in Reception.

We strongly believe in the power of stories and rhymes, therefore we ensure that all of our children have a daily story-time session and songs and rhymes are weaved in throughout our day. 

Our play-based curriculum develops a curiosity and 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 skills

• Developing an effective and engaging environment that is designed to allow children to explore nature and celebrations from a variety of cultures.

• Suggesting home learning opportunities with information about what has been taught, allowing parents to build on their child’s school experiences, at home.

Meet Our Reception Team

Here is our fabulous Reception team (from left to right) Miss Francis- Scotland Class teacher, Miss Ody-teaching assistant, Mrs Francome-teaching assistant, Miss Thompson-Wales class teacher and Early Years Leader, Miss Barlow-teaching assistant and Mrs Meite-teaching assistant.

Here is our Wonderful Nursery Team (from left to right) Miss Daws- Teaching Assistant, Mrs Ash-Ireland Class Teacher, Miss Thompson- Early Years Leader, Mrs McGregor- England Class Room Leader and Mrs Careswell- Teaching Assistant. Mrs Parmenter- Teaching assistant and Mrs Kent- Nursery Nurse will also be joining us in Nursery.