Early Years

Statement of Intent for Early Years

Through a positive caring environment, we provide the opportunity for every child to reach their full potential. We embrace our school core values and ensure all children are ready for their next steps through school and life.

It is our intent to ensure that every child has access to a broad, balanced, and ambitious Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum which prepares our children for now and for the future in terms of opportunities and experiences. Following personal interests and individual needs in the EYFS at Masefield allows us to plan and provide opportunities throughout our curriculum to support learning and development and achieve their next steps.

Our EYFS curriculum aims to enable our children to be:

Knowledgeable and creative learners, who are curious to learn about the world around them
Secure, confident and independent, who enjoy coming to school and learning new skills and knowledge building on their existing learning.
Skilful communicators, who connect with others through language and play, ensuring that they play in a vocabulary rich environment.

It is our intent to ensure that all children receive high-quality teaching of early reading through Read Write Inc. Phonics to learn to read words and simple sentences in line with their phonics knowledge by the end of Reception.

The Early Years at Masefield is based strongly around the needs of our community, whilst following the principles of the EYFS. Our curriculum aims to develop the foundations for excellent communication skills. Our curriculum intent is to provide the children with a range of familiar topics, linked to their own experiences, as well as unfamiliar topics, to spark their interest and exploration of the wider and natural world; we do this by exploring a plethora of book and inviting visitors into school. In doing this, we provide a curriculum and environment where the children feel safe and secure when developing their knowledge and skills yet are challenging and are exposed to new learning.

Nursery

At Masefield we offer places for children from the age of 3. From age 3 all children are entitled to free childcare which in our setting equates to 15 hours per week and this is provided through our main Nursery for 3 and 4 year olds. Some children are eligible for 30 hours – to check if you are eligible, click here.

Our Nursery provision is extremely popular and books up quickly and so we advise that you put your child’s name down for a place as soon as possible (this may be up to a year before they start). If you would like to apply for a place in our Nursery or would like further information please contact the school office on 01204 333714.

Reception

We welcome visits from prospective parents and will be holding an open afternoon in the Autumn term. Admissions into Reception are coordinated by the Local Authority who will handle all procedures for reception admissions into school and will arrange an independent panel for any appeals that may arise. More information can be found here.

Early Years Curriculum

Our EYFS unit is devoted to providing young children with the ability to develop, consolidate and deepen their current knowledge, understanding and skills across all the areas of learning within the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. It builds on what children know and can do, towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for their future learning. Each and every pupil has access to a rich, broad and balanced curriculum that is differentiated to ensure that all individual needs are met. Children within our Nursery have a mix of child-initiated and adult-led learning through continuous provision and small group activities. In Reception, the children are offered a higher number of adult-led experiences (which increases throughout the year) in order to ensure the children are school ready. We feel it is important to offer new ideas and thoughts to our children, which they may not have been exposed to before.The Early Years curriculum has regard to supporting individuals in terms of ability, gifts, talents and any additional needs they may have. The EYFS curriculum provides no limits or barriers to the children’s achievements, regardless of their backgrounds, circumstances or needs. The high ambition it embodies is shared by all staff. We provide an enriching and exciting curriculum that offers challenge to all pupils, including those with SEND and our disadvantaged pupils. We have designed a curriculum which is used to enhance pupil experiences and give opportunities that pupils may not have access to outside of school. Some of these experiences include: attending a traditional birthday party, visiting a park and visiting a farm. These fundamental experiences give children the necessary foundations for the rest of their schooling. You can find detailed knowledge for each EYFS subject area in the subject tab and the curriculum document e.g Geography Curriculum.

Our curriculum overview can be found here:

EYFS Curriculum Overview

Early Years Policy

EYFS Policy

Knowledge Organisers for Early Years

Each unit has knowledge organisers (pupil and parent versions) to support learning. Here is an example below:

EYFS Pupil Knowledge Organiser

EYFS Parent Knowledge Organiser

High quality texts underpinning our Early Years curriculum

To support the teaching of the Early Years curriculum here at Masefield, we have developed a collection of books that all children in our school are to experience and enjoy. We aim to immerse our children in a range of texts, specifically chosen by our staff to ensure that children hear the best stories read aloud to them by their teachers for pleasure, to excite and inspire our children and support the development of knowledge and skills in the Early Years.