Early Years Foundation Stage
Intent
At Glade Academy we are committed to ensuring that children’s very first experiences of school are positive, meaningful and provide a firm foundation in preparing them for life in our school community and beyond.
We recognise that all children join our setting with varied experiences and all staff work diligently to ensure that the learning opportunities provided widen children’s knowledge and skills, setting ambitious expectations for all.
At the heart of our practise lies our schools core values of ‘Respect, Teamwork and Resilience’ ensuring children are immersed in the ethos of our school community from the beginning.
Our knowledge-based curriculum in Early Years is intended to empower children, providing them with a firm foundation of knowledge that they will be able to use successfully as they progress through the school and into adult life. We intend to establish excellent behaviours for learning to enable children to access the curriculum and achieve their full potential. Learning is at the core of every lesson.
We nurture our pupils personal, social and emotional development, providing essential roots of safety, security and readiness to learn. We recognise strong, positive relationships are fundamental to supporting children cognitive development and place high value on our partnership with parents, carers and practitioners to enable our children to be happy and secure learners.
Implementation
Children at Glade Academy will experience a broad curriculum which fosters a love for learning new knowledge and developing skills, preparing them well for future learning.
Traditional stories, rhymes and a range of quality texts are a pivotal part of our curriculum to ensure that children develop the key skills needed to be successful in literacy, and to ensure that they are exposed to a breadth of opportunities to develop vocabulary and knowledge. We use hooks into books to engage children, and to provide a stimulus in which children can immerse themselves in.
Both our indoor and outdoor learning environments, and the resources selected for them, are regularly adapted to meet the different needs and stages of development of our children. We plan these areas carefully to ensure that they are exciting and stimulating, and so that they provide vast opportunities for open-ended exploration and interpretation. We carefully enhance our provision each week through the use of ‘Rainbow Challenges’ which are designed to appeal to children by building upon their current interests. Our ‘Rainbow Challenges’ help to encourage children to broaden their experiences and to facilitate knowledge and skills. Our environments are developed to promote independence within all of our children, ensuring that they are accessible to all.
To support children as they access their continuous provision, our Early years staff employ a range of questioning techniques to further develop children’s knowledge and vocabulary. These quality interactions are a vital aspect in ensuring that children’s ‘Explorer Time’ is as impactful as possible.
Impact
Children will be happy, confident, and independent learners ready to embrace new challenges. They will demonstrate high levels of engagement in activities and develop the knowledge and skills needed to access future learning opportunities successfully.
Children will have developed a breadth of vocabulary through the extensive range of stories, rhymes, poems and songs that they have experienced. They will effectively use this alongside their secure knowledge of phonics to accelerate their journey of becoming competent readers.