Our EYFS is the start of the learning journey at Ryders Green Primary School.

Intent
At Ryders Green Primary School we strive to ensure that every child is given the best educational experiences from their one chance at primary school. Our vision keeps the children at the heart of all that we do so that we support them to develop confidence and the motivation to engage in learning.

All children deserve to have an equal chance of success and the child’s experience is always central to the thinking of every practitioner in our setting. We believe that through kindness, care, positivity and being nurturing ensures our children thrive and know they are safe and well cared for.

Our curriculum is exciting, engaging and carefully sequenced to help children to build their learning over time. We ensure the curriculum is based on the children’s interests, first hand experiences, purposeful interactions and through ‘in the moment’ opportunities as well as carefully planned adult or child- initiated activities.

Implementation
The timetable is carefully structured so that children have directed teaching during the day. These fun, interactive sessions are followed by small focused group work. This means the teaching team can check for understanding, identify any misconceptions quickly and provide verbal feedback which results in a strong impact of new learning. Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms and equal importance is given to learning in both areas.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and our aim is to encourage a love of reading right from the start. In Nursery we follow the DfES Letters and Sounds programme to ensure the children develop and strengthen their speaking and listening skills. The aim of developing these skills ensures the children are ready to start Phase 1 of the Read Write Inc programme in the Summer Term. In Reception, the children are on the RWI programme developing their blending and segmenting skills to help them in their reading. Children are encouraged to read at home and are listened to regularly in school. They are given books that match their phonic knowledge in order for them to apply their learning with the aim of becoming successful, confident and fluent readers.
In Nursery, the children are developing a love of Maths through games, songs and rhymes using concrete materials. Fine motor skills are a focus to develop their one to one correspondence when counting. In Reception, we follow the White Rose Scheme which is consistent across the rest of the school. We have high quality learning environments and the children have meaningful interactions with adults which supports them in developing their mathematical thinking and discussion.

Impact
The staff in EYFS draw on their knowledge of the child and their own expert professional judgements through discussions with other practitioners, photographs and physical examples such as a child’s own independent work. Some observations are uploaded using Tapestry and shared with the parents and carers so they can become part of their children’s learning journey too.

Phonic assessments are carried out using phonics Tracker every half term to quickly identify pupils that are not making expected progress. Our aim is for children to ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’ where possible.

The staff in EYFS have a good understanding of how Early Learning Goals link to the National Curriculum. Through our careful planning and delivery across all of the subjects, the children leave the EYFS stage with the skills, knowledge and confidence to continue their journey as scientists, mathematicians, historians, artists and geographers.