Intent

In the Early Years Department at New Close Primary School, we place great value on the development of children as individuals who are constantly learning, developing resilience and becoming capable, confident and self-assured.

We do this by teaching them the skills, knowledge and understanding that they need to prepare them for the challenges of Key Stage 1 and beyond; the World in their time. This is a continual journey for the children who enter our nursery class and progress through into reception… we believe that the EYFS is a distinct and important phase in education and equal priority is given to supporting children’s social and emotional development as it is their learning. We aim to develop children’s enjoyment of learning, their engagement and their motivation. We encourage children to persist and show gritty determination and to ultimately become happy, curious life-long learners.

Our ambitious and sequenced curriculum is therefore the cultural capital that we know our children need, so that they can develop the knowledge, skills and understanding they require for success. We aim to make this achievable by embedding the right habits for learning through play and exploration, active learning and creating and thinking critically.

Many of our pupils arrive below national expectations for their age and a high proportion come from military and EAL backgrounds. The children in our care have often moved location a lot and our cohorts are very transient. We prioritise personal, social and emotional development and communication and language in our Nursery curriculum. We teach them how to make friends and form bonds by listening and speaking and we have high expectations for behaviour by working together and being kind. Our enabling environment and warm, skilful adult interactions support the children as they begin to link learning to their play and exploration. As the children move into Reception we invest time and energy into helping them set and reflect on their own goals by aiming high and developing a love of phonics, reading, writing and number. This is delivered through a holistic curriculum which maximises opportunities for meaningful cross-curricular links and learning experiences as well as promoting the unique child by offering extended periods of play and sustained thinking, following children’s interests and ideas. For many of our children, a large proportion of their home play is spent on a screen, so we place immense value on developing imagination and creativity and seek to create a sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning through a vibrant continuous indoor and outdoor provision, alongside trips and visits and links to our local community.

A Summary of our Intentions:

In the Early Years Foundation Stage department at New Close School we aim to:

• Create a happy, safe, stimulating and caring environment that provides experiences, which appeal to children with all learning styles.
• To encourage children to become self-motivated and independent learners to make positive and healthy choices.  
• Promote self-esteem.
• Promote independence.
• Encourage children’s curiosity and foster a love of learning.
• Build positive relationships with parents, carers and the wider community.
• Provide play based, hands on learning experiences, both indoors and outdoors.
• Promote good behaviour through high expectations and positive role models.