Early Years

At The Crescent Primary School we focus on the development of children as individuals and providing them with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to prepare them for the challenges in Key Stage One and beyond.

The EYFS is the start of our pupil’s school journey towards achieving this important purpose.  Our ethos in Early Years is to support children’s personal, social and emotional development so that they feel safe and secure and are ready to learn and develop a love of learning. We recognise that all children come into our setting with varied experiences. Through the seven areas of learning we provide topics that excite and inspire children, building on own interests and developing their experiences of the world around them.

Core Principles

We are proud that all our pupils are involved in all aspects of our broad, balanced and stimulating curriculum. Our core principles are:

• That all children learn to be independent, show initiative and deepen their own understanding through use of available resources.
• That we support children’s PSE development encouraging reciprocal behaviour that foster teamwork and a sense of community. Our school personal goals / values embed good morals and positive relationships.
• That we develop children’s attitude to learning to create positive, confident individuals who are both physically and emotionally ready to learn. Being able and willing learn from their mistakes children can then persevere even when the process is challenging
• That we acknowledge how children learn with an emphasis on the value of the process over the outcome.
• That we value children’s curiosity and creativity. We believe that children have many ways of expressing their thinking. Adults and a supportive environment need to allow them to explore, take risks and make their own connections.
• That we support children’s development through modelling resources and techniques that they may not have yet developed. We understand children all develop at their own rate and may need different strategies to reach their full potential.

We aim to achieve our curriculum intent by providing fantastic teaching and learning in an environment where everyone is cared for, valued and respected. This reflects our inclusive, nurturing ethos.  We use high quality texts as the basis for topics that excite and inspire children, developing a love of reading. Exciting entry points are planned to ignite children’s interest, alongside trips that provide a range of enriching experiences.  Pupils learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities.  The timetable is carefully structured so that children have rigorous directed teaching in English, maths and phonics everyday with regular circle time sessions to focus on PSED. 

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. The curriculum is planned in a cross-curricular way to enable all aspects of the children’s development including understanding the world and expressive art and design as well as putting equally importance on the Characteristics of Effective learning.  Observations are taken of the children demonstrating what they have learnt and record significant steps in their learning journey.

Children demonstrate high levels of engagement in activities, developing their speaking and listening skills, enabling them to access more areas of learning and communicate to both adults and children. Children develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including literacy, mathematics and physical development using these in different ways.  Children have developed a wider sense of the world around them and can draw on these experiences during interactions with others and link this to new learning.  Children are excited by learning and develop the skills to become lifelong learners.

Outdoor Learning

We believe the outdoor environment is different to the indoor one and thus provides different experiences that they cannot get inside. Our outdoor environments expose children to nature, weather and real experiences of the world around them.  Outdoor environments provide children with both upwards and outwards space and the potential for large scales projects.  We ensure our outdoor environments are open-ended and allow children to take their learning in any direction they choose. These possible lines of development can be enhanced by adults to support children’s interests and next steps. Adults skilfully channel children’s interests towards their developmental needs.  We understand that indoor topic based learning can be extended and developed through the outdoor environment, however outdoor opportunities are valued in their own right.