All about reception

Everything you need to know about Reception.

We hope you enjoy taking a look at what we are all about and thank you for joining us.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) marks a critical time in your child’s life and development as it helps to provide secure foundations that prepares them for future learning and successes. At St John’s we embrace Christian values and work hard to ensure that children feel safe and happy so that conditions for learning are right for all. This is achieved with dedicated and passionate staff within an environment that inspires, motivates and supports children’s individual and unique needs providing life skills and good moral values. Key to our vision is that every child deserves the

best start in life and through a positive and caring environment we provide the

opportunity for every child to achieve their full potential.

We work tirelessly to ensure children are excited and motivated to learn through rich and challenging experiences which are planned according to children’s stage of development so they can thrive and become well-rounded, independent, resilient and confident. These opportunities allow children to explore, create, learn and are exciting, stimulating and interactive based around core knowledge and skills that the children can learn and retain. We aim to inspire critical thinking and enrich the children’s experiences with an inquiry based approach. All staff have high expectations and set good examples of these expectations.

Our provision is centred around the key principles that:

Every child is unique and will form and Learn through positive relationships

Provide enabling environments to create independent and curious learners

Children developing in different ways and at different rates and are confident for the

next stage in their learning journey

Every day is guided by following the EYFS framework providing carefully planned opportunities, both indoor and outdoor, through adult-led and child initiated learning which challenge thinking and help to embed concepts. Projects are carefully mapped out to provide breadth and depth and allows children to master key skills. Daily phonics, maths, story time and writing is also key. We have high ambitions for children recognising that each child has very different starting points. We work cooperatively with families and communicate with parents to support children’s development.

The EYFS also specifies requirements for learning and development and for safeguarding children and promoting their welfare which are embraced and are guiding principles here at St John's.

Early learning Goals

The EYFS curriculum consists of 17 aspects of learning - at St John's we provide our children with the opportunities to meet the goals in all of these aspects.

Children will learn skills, acquire knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through

7 areas of learning and development

Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first

Communication and language;

Physical development; and

Personal, social and emotional development.

These prime areas are those most essential for a child's healthy development and future learning.

As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas:

Literacy;

Mathematics;

Understanding the world; and

Expressive arts and design.

All 7 areas of learning are used to plan children’s learning and activities. The professionals teaching and supporting your child at St John’s will make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. The curriculum is designed to be really flexible so that staff can follow your child's unique needs and interests.

The impact for every child is assessed through formative and summative assessments with the baseline assessment as their starting point. As a collection of assessment data is a statutory requirement, both teachers and other adults undertake regular observations and record their findings against the Foundation Stage Profile - a national assessment tool and allows teachers to summarise children’s progress towards the Early Learning Goals. To this end we make systematic observations and assessments of each child's achievements, interests and learning styles. We then use these observations and assessments to identify learning priorities and plan relevant and motivating learning experiences for each child.

Each child’s level of development is assessed against the early learning goals. Practitioners will indicate whether children are meeting expected levels of development:

Emerging - not yet reaching expected levels of development for age

Expected - reached expected levels of development for age

Through the use of regular assessments, teachers are able to plan and deliver learning opportunities according to individual pupils’ needs. During the first term in the Reception class, the teacher assesses the ability of each child, using the Foundation Stage Profile. These assessments allow staff to adjust the teaching programme for individual children and groups. The information contained in the profile is shared at our parental consultation meetings.

Assessment plays an important part in helping parents, carers and practitioners to recognise children’s progress, understand their needs, and to plan activities and support. Ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning and development process. It involves practitioners observing children to understand their level of achievement, interests and learning styles, and to then shape learning experiences for each child reflecting those observations. In their interactions with children, practitioners should respond to their own day-to-day observations about children’s progress, and observations that parents and carers share.

Year 1 teachers will have access to the Profile report together with a short commentary on each child’s skills and abilities in relation to the three key characteristics of effective learning. These will inform transition meetings between Reception and Year 1 teachers about each child’s stage of development and learning needs and assist with the planning of activities at the start of Year 1.

These are the key documents that underpin the learning and expectations for Nursery & Reception. September 2021 sees the introduction of the new Statutory Framework for EYFS.

From September 2021 onwards, the following documents will

underpin the expectations for Nursery and Reception: