Early Years Foundation Stage
At Longford Church of England Primary School, we are committed to providing the highest quality care and education for our children. Our Reception children are taught in a mixed aged class with Year 1 children. This classroom structure creates a strong, caring and supportive foundation for our Reception children, and is produced with skilful, progressive and meaningful planning, within a nurturing and stimulating classroom environment.
Our EYFS classroom is shaped by the following four overarching principles:
We pride ourselves on enabling our children to settle in quickly. All staff take the time to ensure that new children feel part of each class and are supported not only in their learning but in all areas of school life. Building secure, positive relationships with each child is core to our classroom partnership. Each child is assigned a buddy to take care of them during their first year of school and we work in partnership with parents and carers to provide and encourage our children to become confident and independent learners.
We follow the guidance set out in the ‘Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework’ (2025) and from the non-statutory guidance ‘Development Matters’ (2023). We use the Early Learning Goals to support our holistic, best-fit judgements about a child’s development and their readiness for KS1. Our curriculum provides many rich opportunities for the children to develop in all areas of their learning and beyond the requirements of this statutory guidance.
The three prime areas which we know are important for building a foundation for igniting a child’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, forming relationships and thriving are:
- Communication and language
- Physical development
- Personal, social and emotional development
And we also support our children in four specific areas through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
Our curriculum encourages all children to develop skills and increase knowledge across a wide range of subjects, and provides children with the opportunity to investigate, question and challenge within an education which enables all to achieve full potential as individuals.
Play is essential for children’s development, building their confidence as they learn to explore, relate to others, set their own goals, and solve problems, and so we place this is at the heart of our Early Years curriculum. A combination of adult-guided and child-led activities, both indoor and outdoor, enable children to lead their learning in a purposeful way. We stimulate children’s interests, responding to each child’s emerging needs and guiding their development through warm, positive interactions coupled with secure routines for play and learning. We continually build strong foundations which encourage a love of learning, academically, morally and spiritually.
High-quality interactions are a guiding principle for our work in the early years, and the language-rich environment we create is crucial to our children’s mental development. These interactions are essential in:
- Encouraging children to take part in back-and-forth conversations
- Teaching children new vocabulary and using language that is not everyday talk, but goes ‘beyond the here and now’
- Extending children’s thinking
- Scaffolding children’s thinking and developing their independent learning
By the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage, we aim to have equipped our children with the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding for their future learning, but also for them to leave the Reception year as kind, independent and resilient individuals that have the confidence and ability to communicate effectively, problem solve, develop ideas and think creatively.
