EYFS

Vision: intent, implementation & impact 

At Rotherfield School, our intent is to give our youngest learners the best possible start to school to ensure their readiness for Year 1 by the end of the year, developing motivation, resilience, a wealth of knowledge and a life-long love of learning through hands-on, varied and highly engaging child-led and adult-initiated learning experiences.   

We will implement our vision through offering a nurturing learning environment and a rich, creative and diverse EYFS curriculum, based on the Early Years Framework but shaped to suit the needs and interests of the children we teach. This will involve:  

•    Offering a deeply inclusive approach centred on knowing and celebrating each child, understanding their starting points and prior learning and focusing on their development as a valuable individual  
•    Developing a friendly, supportive and enabling environment – indoors and outdoors - in which each child is encouraged to explore, create, experiment and seek challenge  
•    Focusing on embedding the prime areas of learning to ensure each child is ready to learn and has the opportunity to succeed  
•    Ensuring all adults are equipped with the skills and knowledge to offer supportive interaction in both adult-led activities and child-initiated learning  
•    Providing an exciting, purposeful and continually evolving long term plan, that is based on a termly theme but that also has the flexibility to follow the children’s interests and harness their natural curiosity. The curriculum will ensure that the children are given meaningful cross-curricular learning opportunities that expand their horizons, offer new experiences and extend and develop their knowledge and understanding  
•    Delivering a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed learning, with a carefully structured timetable to ensure extended periods of play and sustained thinking, as well as the rigorous teaching of maths, English and phonics each day and a balanced offering of the other areas of learning in the EYFS Framework  
•    Ensuring cohesion and consistency with Key Stage 1 and 2 in the teaching of phonics (following Read Write Inc) and maths (following White Rose)  
•    All children learning together, but with a range of additional support and interventions delivered in class and same day  
•    Integrating the Characteristics of Effective Learning in all that we do  

 The impact of the vision will be: 

•    Children make good progress from their varied starting points and the percentage of children achieving a good level of development  will be in line with or higher than the national and local average  
•    Children demonstrate curiosity, independence, resilience and motivation in their learning and play  
•     Children are ready to transition from Early Years to the National Curriculum in Year 1  

Long Term Planning

Long Term Overview