Our Early Years curriculum is designed to promote a positive attitude towards learning, so that children enjoy all subjects, and acquire a solid basis for lifelong learning, regardless of their unique starting points. The curriculum is coherently planned based on children’s needs, interests and carefully considered outcomes. This is derived from stories and experiences of the wider world. At Heathfield, we recognise the importance of providing children with high quality texts as an essential way to build a wide and rich vocabulary, as well as supporting long term memory. Research suggests that long term memory depends on meaning; unless children can make sense of what they are exposed to, the new knowledge cannot make its way in to the long term memory. As a result, we ensure we provide opportunities that include:
- Practical first hand experiences
- Nursery rhymes and familiar stories to reinforce memory though plentiful repetition
- Actions, signing, physical activity and movement
- Stories with repeated phrases
- Role play
- Sequencing
- Retrieval and recall
Stories are repeated and revisited as we believe that repetition is important. We strive to ignite a love of stories and rhymes to ensure children want to hear stories again and again.
First Steps Yearly Overview
1/3
Nursery Yearly Overview
2/3
Reception Yearly Overview
3/3
Previous
Next
The 7 areas of learning and development are equally important and interconnected. We recognise the prima areas of learning are particularly important for igniting curiosity and enthusiasm for learning and for building children’s capacity to learn, form relationships and start their journey to ‘lifelong learning’. These are strengthened through the more specific areas of learning which provide direct teaching opportunities to prepare children for the next stage in their learning journey.
Knowledge and skills are coherently planned and sequenced, ensuring all areas are taught in a logical progression. Practitioners have high academic ambitions and the curriculum provides no limits or barriers. Knowledge and skills are taught directly and learning is not left to chance. At Heathfield, we recognise the continuous provision as the ‘third teacher’. Every resource within the provision has been carefully considered and chosen to ensure children have the tools they need to succeed, even in the absence of an adult facilitating play.
1/12
2/12
3/12
4/12
5/12
6/12
7/12
8/12
9/12
10/12
11/12
12/12
Previous
Next
The outdoors is considered an addition to the classroom where children can test their ideas on a larger scale. In the outdoors, children develop their gross motor movements with opportunities to climb and move freely. The children begin to learn about the natural world around them through exploration within our large natural outdoor space. It is also a time for children to explore the elements in an exciting and engaging way. Opportunities to explore the natural world are integrated into daily practice. At Heathfield, we recognise the importance for children to have access to natural space and we understand that not all families will have access to this at home.
In Early Years, we aim to 'build a writer' in every child. We focus on developing their fine and gross motor skills, articulation skills and vocabulary skills.
Children participate in daily squiggle sessions. These support the development of gross motor skills through carefully planned movements to build strength and coordination. They then transfer these large movements on to paper, using crayons to recreate the shapes.
In Reception, once children are demonstrating good strength and co-ordination skills, they then move onto daily handwriting sessions.
Vocabulary is not left to chance in the Early Years.
Within the phase, subject specific vocabulary is identified and carefully planned to ensure that as children transition into Key Stage 1&2, they have a solid foundation of core vocabulary that can be built upon as they progress through school. These words are taught alongside our quality text curriculum, to enable children to learn new words in real contexts, ensuring these embed into their long term memory.
Widgit symbols are used alongside vocabulary to support children's understanding and allow for dual coding.
In Early Years, we have high behaviour standards and these align with the culture at Heathfield. Across EYFS, we explicitly focus on and teach the following five values:
Nursery and Reception class have a traffic light system. All children start their day on green and can progress to 'super silver' or 'glorious gold', especially when demonstrating the above values. These positive behaviours are also rewarded with 'value' sticker, along with very specific praise from adults. This allows children to recognise the positive behaviours they have displayed encouraging them and others to repeat these actions/behaviours in the future. Stickers are an in the moment celebration and they support parents to recognise children’s achievements in school.
At the end of each week, the class teacher will decide on a ‘star of the week’ child. This child will take home their class mascot for the weekend, with a certificate celebrating their specific achievement.
Parents and carers are a child's first educators and we recognise the importance of building positive and lasting relationships with all our Heathfield families. We encourage families to be actively involved in their child's learning journey at Heathfield and to enable us develop these effective relationships, in Early Years we use Tapestry.
Tapestry is an online learning platform which allows school to share key learning with parents/carers, giving an insight into their child's learning journey. Parents/carers are actively encourage to engage with Tapestry to share photos and videos from home too. This enables us to have an insight into life at home for our Heathfield children, and we often share children's home lives in the classroom.
Tapestry is also an effective communication tool between parents and the EY staff. Drop off and pick up can be a very busy time, and not always the best time to speak to an adult. We encourage families to use Tapestry to send messages to teachers if there is anything that needs to be shared.
For more information about Tapestry, please visit their FAQs page that can be found below:
Termly homework is also set, in the form of 'at home' I can statements. These have been planned by the Early Years staff to support children's learning and development at home and are designed to be worked upon over the whole term. As children are successful in achieve individual tasks, rewards are given. Parents are encouraged to use Tapestry to share children's successes and these are tracked in school.
For our youngest children, the 'at home' I can statements are designed to support their prime areas of learning: Communication & Language, Physical Development and Personal, Social and Emotional skills. Children in Recepion are then given specific learning tasks linked to Reading, Writing and Maths.
All children have a separate section of self-help tasks. These have been designed to aide children in building their independence skills at home as these will be of huge benefit in school.
Please find below and example of our home learning task sheets:
First Steps Spring home learning task
1/3
Nursery Spring home learning task
2/3
Reception Spring home learning task
3/3
Previous
Next