Curriculum incl Assessment
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Curriculum
We believe that “Crossways children will be confident and aspirational individuals who light up the room by living the values of the school.” This starts in The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and in the curriculum we offer. Inclusivity of provision is key for all children and school community and so meaningful and exciting activities are planned with this in mind using all areas of our beautiful environment, inside and out.
Early reading and numeracy skills underpin our curriculum with our structured phonics programme taking a key role in all learning opportunities. Our skills based activities enable our children to connect different ideas and knowledge across all areas of learning and create a solid foundation for years to come.
Our school is part of an ever growing diverse community both locally and globally and we passionately believe that it is the role of our curriculum to help develop our children’s curiosity, their awareness of, and respect for, diversity and understanding of their place within this.
The EYFS Curriculum
At Crossways we follow the EYFS curriculum “Development Matters.” This starts within your child’s pre-school provision and continues through until the start of Year 1.
There are three prime areas and four specific areas of learning in the Foundation Stage Framework curriculum:
Prime Areas of the EYFS curriculum.
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED)
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development.
In the Prime Areas, the children learn to:
- Share, take turns and develop respect for each other.
- Make friends and become confident independent learners.
- Behave appropriately when playing with others.
- Listen to others and understand spoken language to enable children to follow instructions correctly.
- Learn new words rapidly, use them in conversations and develop their own narratives and explanations.
- Join in conversations with adults and children.
- Develop control of their bodies using both large scale movements such as running and jumping and small scale movements such as holding pencils and using scissors.
Specific Areas of the EYFS curriculum.
- Literacy
- Maths
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design.
In the Specific Areas, the children learn to:-
- Recognise phonemes (letter sounds) and Graphemes (letter shapes) following our schools English Policy.
- Enjoy sharing books and stories with adults and friends.
- Begin to read simple sentences using phonic knowledge to decode regular words.
- Draw, make marks, write letters, words and simple sentences. To form our letters in the cursive handwriting style when ready.
- Count accurately groups of objects and recognise numerals.
- Add, subtract and problem solve during practical activities.
- Use everyday language to talk about size, weight, capacity, distance, time, money and shape.
- Look closely at how things work, why things happen, living things and the natural world.
- Use ICT equipment.
We aim to bring this to life through visitors coming to talk to the children and also through visits to local places of interest. Parents and carers play a key role in supporting their children through their learning and practice of skills at home.
