Early Years Foundation Stage

Intent

In our Early Years classrooms, the curriculum is designed to acknowledge each child's prior learning, whether from previous settings or their experiences at home. We understand that every child begins at a different point, and we strive to create a nurturing environment for all. This is achieved through offering a variety of child-led, hands-on learning opportunities. We believe that the foundation of learning is built on teaching essential skills, knowledge, concepts, and values. To support this, we provide numerous first-hand experiences to deepen the children's understanding of the world around them.

We are committed to ensuring that children's first school experiences are joyful and positive, laying the foundation for a lifelong love of learning. To create this environment, we use positive language that fosters a healthy sense of self-esteem. We aim to build trust, resilience, ambition, and integrity, enabling children to believe in themselves and their peers. Each child is recognised as a unique individual, and we celebrate and embrace the diverse cultures within our community. We work to ensure that children and their families feel valued, respected, and empowered to make choices that positively impact their lives.

Our nurturing approach promotes positive attitudes toward learning and behaviour, helping children to respect and appreciate their full potential. Community involvement and parental engagement are key elements of our curriculum. Children leave our setting with a strong sense of belonging to a close-knit community, equipped with the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, form connections, and continue their journey as lifelong learners.

Implementation

At St Matthew’s, the Prime Areas of Learning are at the heart of everything we do. Mastery of these areas is essential for children to advance in their learning and development. With this in mind, we have thoughtfully designed our environment to support these key areas through a research-driven approach, with a particular emphasis on creating Communication Friendly Spaces. Our resources and provision are carefully planned to encourage children to practice important skills such as taking turns, engaging in conversations, and developing both fine and gross motor skills.

We foster the development of emotional regulation and positive behaviour by applying our knowledge of brain development and research on young children’s growth. At St Matthew’s, we plan topics based on children’s interests while ensuring they acquire the key knowledge and skills necessary to become lifelong learners. Through these topics, children build expertise in Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World, and Expressive Arts and Design. We have a dedicated time focusing on health and self-care. We share a range of healthy snacks every day and we learn about the importance of a healthy balanced diet. We discuss the impact this can have on our bodies.

Language and vocabulary development are central to our curriculum, and we support this through high-quality interactions, modelling, sentence stems, and storytelling. We embed essential oracy skills such as taking turns in conversation and maintaining eye contact with the speaker, laying the foundation for effective communication. We use the ShREC model to scaffold talk in the Early Years Foundation Stage:  

The ‘ShREC’ approach in practice | EEF

We strengthen children’s understanding of reading and writing through our phonics program and small group, adult-led writing activities. We believe in a ‘phonics from the start’ approach, incorporating listening games, bucket time, and phonological awareness games, progressing to explicit phonics instruction and blending. Children are encouraged to independently engage in reading and writing activities through play, with resources readily available for independent use. Staff model a love of reading through class stories and by utilising reading areas both indoors and outdoors.

Our learning environment is rich in mathematical opportunities, supporting both explicit teaching and child-initiated mathematical development. Mathematics is taught through whole-class activities, with oracy and sentence stems helping to enhance the children’s mathematical language and vocabulary.

We also place great importance on Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design, giving children the chance to explore the world around them, both inside and outside, while taking ownership of their own learning and exploratory play. At St Matthew’s, we believe it is crucial to nurture a love of learning and to create an environment where making mistakes is viewed as a natural part of the learning process.

New skills and knowledge are introduced during adult-led sessions. Alongside the adult-led activities the children will be provided with a range of opportunities to complete child-initiated tasks both within the indoor and outdoor learning environments through continuous provision. The children then take what they have learnt and further develop, explore and embed their learning during continuous provision. A vital aspect in the development of essential knowledge and skills is their use within continuous provision. This means that children are using and developing taught skills throughout the year on a daily/weekly basis. We constantly provide enhancement opportunities to engage learners and link to our topics. We encourage children to be independent in the continuous provision using “challenges”. We support children to be intrinsically motivated to complete the challenges and therefore take ownership of their own learning.

We plan a broad and balanced curriculum which provides children with a range of first-hand experiences and opportunities to get out into the local community.

Impact:

One way that we measure the impact of our curriculum is through assessment procedures which allow us to measure outcomes against all schools nationally. We measure the percentage of pupils achieving a ‘expected level of development’ by the end of the Reception year.

The impact of our curriculum is also measured by how effectively it helps our pupils develop into well rounded individuals who embody our values and carry with them the knowledge, skills and attitudes which will make them lifelong learners and valuable future citizens. We aim to instill a sense of awe and wonder in every child. Making them curious and inquisitive about the world in which they are living. We want our children to ask questions, to dream big and most of all, to recognise the potential within themselves. When children leave our Foundation Stage Class, we not only endeavour for them to be Year One ready, but well-rounded individuals with positive attitudes towards learning for life.

Children will:

• settle into nursery and school quickly and be ready to learn within their first session
• move confidently around the environment and are able to select, use and develop their play independently
• deepen their learning and explore what they have been taught independently through a purposeful environment
• develop a love of reading and leave the EYFS with the key skills to decode and read simple sentences
• have a good range of vocabulary and are able to use topic specific words and speak in full sentences
• have a deep knowledge of numbers to 10 and are able to use this knowledge to subitise, recall number bonds to 5, and spot numerical patterns
• transition well into KS1 with the required skills to continue their learning journey

EYFS Statement of Curriculum May 2025 

Curriculum Map Nursery Curriculum Map Reception 

Statutory EYFS Framework 2024

Guidance Development Matters 2023

Guidance Birth To Five Matters 2021