What to expect when my child is in Early Years
Our Early Years Provision is staffed by a caring and passionate team of teachers and practitioners. Staff are highly experienced and work closely alongside all the children to help them to become powerful and capable learners. We take time to listen to the children and their interests, this is then documented in our planning, learning journals, tapestry and on our displays. We use their interests to plan our environment to make sure that all children are provided with the best learning areas possible and we ensure these areas provide challenge to the children. We make sure that the voices of all of our children are heard and we celebrate the diversity of our classes.
In our Early Years Provision there is a great emphasis on the learning environment, we refer to this as the third teacher. We use natural and open ended resources (we call these provocations and invitations) to inspire the children and provoke further learning. We encourage the children to explore and investigate, this then helps to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the world around them. We hope that because of our wonderful practitioners, inspiring environments and carefully developed curriculum, all of our children become independent, confident and resilient, ready to take on the rest of their school life. But don’t just take our word for it, Ofsted also graded us OUTSTANDING!
Continuous Provision
Early years education is very special and unique, its focus is child development, effective learning characteristics and holistic approaches to learning. The complexity of early years can sometimes be baffling and overwhelming to those who do not work in it. In fact, the early years is so unique that it has its own terminology: terms like ‘enhancements’ and ‘continuous provision’ are part of the language of early years practice, alongside phrases like “less is more” and “planning in the moment”. Continuous provision describes all of the different provision areas which are available for your children to use every day within our settings. Within each of these areas of provision are a range of resources that children can use all of the time, throughout the whole half term. These areas are usually added to as the children learn more, ask more questions and tell us more of their interests. Generally, we change our continuous provision areas every half term to fit in with our school themes and the children’s fascinations, but some areas will remain the same for much longer. Planning effectively for continuous provision is crucial and involves a consideration of classroom layout and resourcing, this enables staff to offer a breadth of learning possibilities for the children. Please keep an eye out on our school Facebook page and our Instagram page, @capitivating_
Standardised Assessments
We believe that YOU, our parents and carers know the children best, this is why we ask for your feedback on tapestry and during parent consultations. The information you give us helps us to assess where the children are in their learning and where we need to take the learning next. As well as our parents and carers, we believe that the practitioner’s understanding of the children is what matters. We do not believe in lots of testing and assessments for our little people. But, there is a small number of assessments provided to us from the government that we MUST complete in reception. These are known as RBA (Reception Baselines) and are an assessment of pupils’ starting points in:
- language, communication and literacy
- mathematics
The RBA will be a short task-based assessment. Pupils will use practical resources to complete these tasks and teachers will record the results on a laptop, computer or tablet. It will not be used to label or track individual pupils, but we are required to carry out the assessment within the first 6 weeks of pupils starting reception. No numerical score will be shared and the data will only be used at the end of year 6 to form the school-level progress measure. However, we as reception teachers will receive a series of short, narrative statements that tell them how their pupils performed in the assessment. These can be used to inform teaching within the first term but we use soooo much more than that.
We also have to assess the children as to whether we believe that they have reached ELG (Early Learning Goals). The revised EYFS profile requires practitioners to assess all children against a set of 17 early learning goals (ELGs) by the end of the reception year. It is based on ongoing observation and assessment in the three prime and four specific areas of learning, and the three characteristics of effective learning. This sounds very scary and confusing but I promise you it’s not intrusive and a great deal of learning is still through play. We WILL call all parents,carers in for a chat about this when your child is in reception so you are aware of everything that is going on. Accurate assessment should take account of a range of perspectives including those of the child, parents and other adults who have significant interactions with the child. This means YOU will be involved in a huge part of this process too.
Home Learning
So much of what you do at home will help us to assess our curriculum including:
- Baking and cooking
- Exploring in the garden and community
- playing with playdough
- Singing and dancing
- Any clubs your children may attend like football or gymnastic
- Counting the stairs or looking at the shapes around your house
Because of this, we URGE parents to upload the wonderful things you get up to on tapestry. Your child’s teacher may send home slips about things they are learning about and this may include challenges to complete. There may be mini resource packs to practice with your children too which will help them to learn something new or embed learning that is happening in the classroom.
Reading at Home
In with our school reading policy, we ask that you read /withto your child 3 TIMES A WEEK and record this in their reading record. Reading to or with your child is invaluable and will help them so much with their progress in reading. Reading books aloud to children stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. It helps them develop language and listening skills and prepares them to understand the written word. Even after children learn to read by themselves, it’s still important for you to read aloud together.
