Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) at Platt Bridge Community School
Our outstanding Early Years Foundation Stage provides an exciting and engaging curriculum that is constantly evolving to meet the needs of every child. Communication, Language, and stories are truly at the heart of everything we do. We believe all young children learn best through play within high-quality, focused continuous provision.
Our Philosophy and Aims
We are committed to providing children with the very best start in their education, fostering a safe, happy environment where every child feels a sense of belonging and can thrive. Our key aims are to:
- Promote holistic development, removing barriers and unlocking opportunities to address disadvantage, nurturing educated citizens.
- Create life-enhancing experiences that raise aspirations for our children, families, and community, equipping them with the cultural capital needed for success.
- Prepare children for life in modern Britain by developing new knowledge and skills.
- Maintain high expectations for all children, providing tailored support for excellent outcomes.
Our curriculum is carefully designed to broaden children’s experiences, build on their prior knowledge, and prepare them for the next stage in their education. It’s based on the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum, uniquely adapted through our deep knowledge of each individual child and underpinned by our bespoke continuums.
Curriculum Implementation
Our curriculum is primarily driven by high-quality texts and stories, around which we build a thematic approach. This enables children to make meaningful links, develop rich vocabulary, and become well-rounded learners. You can find our text spine and core coverage for each age group (2s-3s, Pre-School, Reception) detailed below.
Teaching and Development
In our Early Years, we expertly balance explicit instruction and small group time with high-quality, focused continuous provision. This blend ensures children engage in meaningful interactions with adults and peers, fostering deep learning. Example timetables for Nursery and Reception can be found below.
Our ambitious curriculum aims for all children to achieve the seventeen Early Learning Goals of the Early Years Foundation Stage.
Areas of Learning: How We Bring Our Curriculum to Life
Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED)
We empower children to be safe, happy, and confident individuals, supporting them to understand and manage their emotions through co-regulation and teaching effective self-regulation strategies. Through adult modelling and guidance, children learn to form strong friendships, resolve conflicts calmly, and promote resilience, belief and respect. We celebrate achievements with Dojo points and ‘Fill the bucket’ rewards, using stories like ‘The Colour Monster’ to explore feelings. Children also learn about self-care, including healthy eating and exercise, connecting these to our curriculum (e.g., healthy fruit kebabs with ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’).
Physical Development
Our fantastic outdoor environment serves as an outdoor classroom, offering constant opportunities for learning, exploration, and collaboration, no matter the weather. We prioritize developing both gross and fine motor skills through:
- Gross Motor: Large-scale art projects, climbing frames, den building, and construction areas, enhancing proprioception, vestibular control, bilateral integration, and upper body strength.
- Fine Motor: A dedicated woodwork area, along with enhanced indoor resources like split pins, hole punches, and garlic presses in playdough.
- Daily Funky Fingers activities and a weekly Reception PE lesson further support progressive physical development across the phase.
Communication and Language
Communication and Language underpins everything we do. We prioritize high-quality adult-child interactions within our extensive continuous provision time. Our well-trained staff ‘tune in’ to children’s play, adding language through commenting, repeating, and rephrasing to develop vocabulary. Our language-rich environment is continuously evaluated, featuring ‘home corners’ and ‘Let’s talk about’ books for familiar conversation. Our carefully designed reading areas, enhanced with props and characters for our ‘Book of the Month’ approach, actively engage children with stories, non-fiction, rhymes, and poems, embedding new words in context.
During whole-class sessions, children are encouraged to listen and communicate effectively using discussion guidelines and talk partners, promoting active listening, building on ideas, and effective teamwork. Targeted interventions like WELCOMM support children who need additional communication support.
Reading
From the moment children enter our setting, they are immersed in a world of high-quality stories. We strive to instill a lifelong love of reading, with stories underpinning our entire curriculum. We select core stories for each room, ensuring children know them well. We bring reading to life through “Story Land” visits, acting out stories, “wow” moments, and continuous provision enhancements.
We follow the Read Write Inc approach to phonics. Children learn new sounds daily, reading and writing words, and reviewing previous sounds for continuous retrieval. Phonics sessions include story reading for fluency and expression. Children work in targeted progress groups, receiving one-to-one tutoring when needed, ensuring no child is left behind. We encourage daily home reading with phonics-matched books.
Writing
Children are encouraged to write and mark-make daily, with progression across rooms. In our 2-3s room, we encourage large-scale mark-making through messy play. As children move up, we focus on pre-writing shapes and adding meaning to marks. We use Read Write Inc for letter formation and offer provision enhancements for application. ‘Scribble Club’ and ‘Drawing Club’ in Pre-school and Reception immerse children in stories, fostering creativity, imagination, and writing with purpose.
Mathematics
Maths is seamlessly woven into our daily routines across all rooms, from counting children and discussing the calendar to voting for stories. In Reception, we follow White Rose for daily maths inputs, incorporating whole-class teaching, guided groups, and continuous provision enhancements. The curriculum is broken into manageable blocks, building step-by-step to promote numeracy skills in an engaging and positive way, ensuring children have fun with counting, shapes, and more.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Our progressive curriculum for Knowledge and Understanding of the World centers around the child, providing real-life experiences like woods visits, local care home visits, and bug hunts. We celebrate similarities and differences among children and set up environments to encourage exploration. Adults support children’s natural curiosity and interests through interactions, discussing abstract concepts like the past, and learning about diverse cultures and festivals, comparing them to personal celebrations.
Expressive Arts and Design
Our progressive Expressive Arts curriculum fosters creativity and a love of the arts through hands-on experiences. Our indoor and outdoor environments inspire exploration with colours, textures, and materials. We introduce children to a broad range of artistic mediums (paints, clay, natural materials) and techniques (mark-making, printing, collage, sculpture, large-scale collaborative art). Children are exposed to diverse artists like Andy Goldsworthy, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Yayoi Kusama to broaden their understanding. We encourage independence in resource selection, celebrate individuality, and guide children to make their own aesthetic choices, promoting confident self-expression and the joy of creating.
Our Environment
Our Early Years environments are calm, well-organized spaces designed to support thoughtful and progressive growth. Carefully planned, high-quality resources engage young learners, fostering creativity, curiosity, and enhancing communication skills within a language-rich setting. Calm, quiet spaces allow for reflection. Our intentional planning nurtures independence, creativity, and a lifelong love of learning, with children’s work proudly displayed throughout.
Parental Engagement
We pride ourselves on strong relationships with our parents and continuously seek opportunities to develop them further. Our current approaches include:
- Home visits: Staff learn about interests and address concerns, providing a familiar face and informing classroom enhancements.
- Inspire sessions: Pre-start sessions for parents and children to explore the setting together.
- Open door policy: Parents can speak to staff before and after school.
- Parental workshops: Focusing on areas like mark-making, phonics, and reading.
- Class Dojo: Regular key information and weekly updates on learning.
- Parent meetings: Held in Autumn and Spring terms to discuss progress.
- Reception to Year 1 transition meeting: In the Summer term.
- PIP (Parents in Partnership) project: Book-based sessions run by our HLTAs, fostering a love of reading and activity engagement.