Early Years Foundation Stage
Intent
At Glade Academy, we are dedicated to ensuring that every child’s first experience of school is positive, meaningful, and forms a strong foundation for lifelong learning. We recognise that each child joins our setting with unique experiences, and our staff work with commitment and care to provide learning opportunities that broaden children’s knowledge and skills, setting ambitious expectations for all.
Our practice is underpinned by the school’s core values of Respect, Resilience, and Teamwork, ensuring that children are immersed in the ethos of our community from the very beginning. Our knowledge-rich Early Years curriculum is designed to empower children by providing them with the essential foundations of knowledge and understanding that they will continue to build upon as they progress through school and into adult life.
We aim to establish positive learning behaviours that enable children to access the curriculum inclusively and achieve their full potential. Personal, social, and emotional development is nurtured carefully, ensuring that children feel safe, secure, and ready to learn. Strong, positive relationships lie at the heart of our approach, and we place high value on working in partnership with parents, carers, and potential outside agencies to ensure our children are happy, confident, and engaged learners.
Implementation
Children at Glade Academy experience a broad and balanced curriculum that inspires curiosity, builds knowledge, and develops essential skills for future success. A love of reading is at the heart of our approach, with traditional tales, rhymes, and high-quality texts forming the foundation of our literacy curriculum. Through these rich experiences, children develop strong language skills, broaden their vocabulary, and deepen their understanding of the world.
We use engaging ‘hooks into books’ to spark interest and create meaningful contexts for learning. Our carefully planned indoor and outdoor environments are designed to be stimulating, inclusive, and adaptable to meet the developmental needs of all learners. They provide opportunities for exploration, creativity, and problem-solving through both structured and child-initiated play.
Provision is enhanced weekly through our ‘Rainbow Challenges’, which build on children’s interests and encourage them to explore new ideas and skills. These challenges promote independence, perseverance, and wonder. Staff play a crucial role in extending learning through high-quality interactions and skilful questioning, ensuring that every moment of ‘Choosing Time’ contributes to meaningful progress and development.
Impact
By the end of their time in Early Years at Glade Academy, children will be happy, confident, and independent learners, equipped with the interest and resilience to embrace new challenges. They will demonstrate high levels of engagement, motivation, and self-regulation in their learning. We will have successfully bridged any gaps caused by issues surrounding school readiness, broadened every child’s experience and added to their cultural capital.
Children will have developed a wide vocabulary and strong communication skills through their experiences with stories, rhymes, poems, and songs. They will apply their secure phonics knowledge to read with increasing fluency and comprehension, laying the foundations for lifelong literacy. They will have the beginnings of ‘mastery of number’; paving the way for strong numeracy skills, that will support them throughout their learning journey and in the future.
Ultimately, our children leave the Early Years phase ready to thrive in Key Stage 1 and beyond — as enthusiastic, capable learners with a love of discovery and a strong sense of belonging within our school community.