Intent

At Sneyd Academy our core values of respect, resilience and positivity drive our EYFS vision.  We offer an array of exciting ‘WOW’ opportunities through a rich, stimulating, safe, and nurturing environment that promotes children’s curiosity, creativity, and autonomy. We strive to create a learning environment that supports children’s individual physical, emotional, and intellectual development, it sets high expectations which challenge the children to achieve excellence and be their best.  We provide high-quality teaching, that enthuses the children to learn, and ensure success.

We value our parents as partners, and promote a variety of activities ensuring we have strong links between home and school.

The Curriculum

The EYFS curriculum at Sneyd Academy aims to provide all children with a secure foundation and quality education experience that fosters a love for learning, whilst meeting the individual needs of each child. It has been devised from the Development Matters and Birth to Five documents and links to our KS1 curriculum to ensure a sequential, progressive learning experience and a smooth transition.

There are 7 areas of learning within the EYFS. Prime areas are the basic life-long skills that pave the way for children to progress towards specific areas of learning. Specific areas of learning cannot be developed alone and rely on the skills gained in the prime areas of learning.

Prime Areas:

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Specific Areas:

• Literacy
• Maths
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

At Sneyd Academy the children develop these skills through quality first teaching delivered by knowledgeable staff alongside activities planned from the children’s interests and experiences. These sessions are enhanced through purposeful continuous provision to drive their learning forward.  Staff are continually facilitating learning throughout the school day.

Click here to view the EYFS Overview

Characteristics of Effective Learning

The characteristics of Effective Learning describe how children learn. Our staff are very aware of these, and they then use this knowledge to ensure that the pupils learn well within our environment.

The three Characteristics of Effective Learning are:

• Playing and exploring
• Active learning
• Creating and thinking critically

The staff observe the ways in which children approach their learning through decisions and interests and then adjust practise accordingly to provide exciting and stimulating activities which extend and develops their learning.

Approaches to Learning

We ensure our children are happy at school, that they have good self-regulation, and demonstrate a love for learning.  We offer a variety of activities both indoors and outdoors and we work closely with the children to highlight and work on their individual next steps.  The children receive a new library book each week and also join in with weekly P.E sessions.

Nursery

Our Nursery can accommodate 52 children, we work in smaller groups to ensure the children have close bonds with the staff and other children. The children will receive daily phonics and maths sessions and engage in ‘Squiggle,’ which is our early mark making scheme. We enjoy Wonderful Wednesday which is a wow-topic activity, we carry out music sessions and much much more! When we are not on focussed activities the children are immersed into continuous provision with the staff working alongside them to support and challenge the children’s needs and development.

Reception

In Reception we carry out daily phonics, Literacy and maths sessions, starting with Squiggle to support letter formation and then moving on to writing time. We enjoy lots of topic-based activities and ensure that children still have the opportunity to be immersed into continuous provision with the staff working alongside them to support and challenge their needs and development.

Enrichment

Throughout your time in Nursery and Reception, the children will experience a wide range of enriched activities, you can access these on the link below:

https://heyzine.com/flip-book/52c137ffdd.html

Assessment

Alongside continuous formative assessment we assess progress points throughout the year to make sure we are fully aware of exactly where each child is working. In order to determine whether a child is making progress or not, we use teacher judgements of each child and any evidence to support this throughout these assessment stages.

We accomplish this utilising our assessment framework, which describes the skills and knowledge we want children to have at certain points over the school year. Rapid intervention is implemented in cases where children are falling behind to support children with particular needs. Each child’s most important next step is known to teachers, who utilise this information to create individualised learning opportunities or interventions.

Once our children are settled in Reception we carry out the statutory Reception Baseline assessment.

Communication and Interventions

Across the EYFS we use the Stoke Speaks Out communication screen which is carried out at the beginning, middle and end of the year. This enables us to identify strengths and areas for development in yo9ur child’s

We see great importance in supporting our children with their communication skills, we use a program in Nursery called Tizzy Time, which is a fun circle time activity where the children learn to talk in sentences with Tizzy the Tiger. We then use this as an intervention in Reception. If children are not working at the expected standard, we can put support in place to help them and also communicate with external agencies.

Parents

We really value the importance of having strong relationships with our parents, to help each child achieve their full potential. This starts in the Summer term before our new families start. We have an open evening and meet the teacher sessions.

We use an app called Class Dojo and we use this to upload some of the learning opportunities that children experience, photographs and other general information to ensure the parents know everything about life in the early years department. Parents and teachers can also communicate through Class Dojo.

Throughout the year we invite parents to a range of activities such as Christmas jingle, Mother and Father’s Day afternoon, breakfast with parents, to name just a few.

Transition to Year 1

Transition from Reception to Year 1 can be seen as a big change and our priority is to ensure we make this as smooth as possible for the children. Children meet their Year 1 teacher several times in the summer term and the children also get to visit their new class. We provide transition information for parents to ensure they have all the vital information.

Pupil Voice

I love playing and learning – Aqsa

I loved going on our trip to Apple Tree Farm – Jewel

I love going outside and seeing my brother – Sam

I love writing, today I wrote about an octopus – Miriam

I like to hug my teacher – Naz

I like making – Isla

I liked seeing the chicks hatch – Medina

I love P.E and running around the bottom playground – Ivy

I love our new activities every day – Arthur