At Wrawby St. Mary’s CE Primary, we offer a curriculum full of love, challenge and excitement striving to give hope and a future for all as we develop our children into the pioneers and leaders of the future.  At Wrawby St. Mary’s CE Primary, we offer a curriculum full of love, challenge and excitement striving to give hope and a future for all as we develop our children into the pioneers and leaders of the future. 

Intent

In our Early Years setting it is our intent that all children develop physically, verbally, cognitively and emotionally . Our children will be confident, independent to believe in themselves and have the skills to interact positively with others. We ensure pupils are provided with the correct mix of adult directed and child-initiated play, which ensures the best outcomes. Warm and positive relationships between staff and children, consistent routines and strong relationships with parents are key. We recognise the crucial role that early year’s education has to play in providing firm foundations upon which the rest of a child’s education is successfully based.

Implementation

At Wrawby St. Mary’s CE Primary, we meet the welfare requirements laid down in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and we actively safeguard and promote the welfare of all of our children. We follow a well-planned timetable to ensure that routines are consistent throughout each day.

The children at Wrawby St. Marys CE Primary, are encouraged to become early readers through enjoyment of books and the systematic teaching of our phonics programme, Read Write Inc. In the Early Years, we have a focus text for each half term which we use as a basis to teach various writing genres. We ensure that we develop writing progression from developing fine motor skills, pencil control, writing CVC words and we build up to writing simple sentences. We use the talk for write strategies to story map and orally retell familiar stories. We use some of the strategies used by the wider school community in terms of looking at vocabulary in the text, building a sentence and holding a sentence. This ensures that the children have the skills to prepare them as they transition into Year 1. 

The children develop their mathematical thinking through daily maths teaching and independent exploration in the continuous provision on offer. Our children become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real life experiences.

Pupils in the Early Years at Wrawby St. Marys CE Primary, spend time both in the indoor and outdoor areas of the classroom. The engaging activities on offer ensure a well-balanced curriculum offer covering the prime and specific areas of the Early Years curriculum.  Through this provision the pupils learn to cooperate and listen to others individually, in pairs, small groups and as a whole class. Throughout each day, adults will work with small groups or will develop individual targets where instant verbal feedback is given to check understanding and address any misconceptions they may have in their new learning. Our learning environment is adaptable in order to reflect children's interests and progression. The children are supported to learn to work together, manage their feelings and ask questions through skilled adult facilitated play.

We teach a dedicated RE lesson once per week and use resources suitable for our cohort that we have at the present time. The RE learning aims to teach the pupils to celebrate how special they are and how they are similar to and different from others. We celebrate these differences. We learn about our own worldview and we learn to understand and celebrate the worldviews of others.

To ensure we teach about culture and diversity, being aware of our catchment area we receive pupils from, we celebrate Diwali and Chinese New Year. We taste food from these areas and talk about where they are in the world to give the pupils a sense of the wider world.

The Reception pupils take part in dedicated PE lessons each week. They also have the opportunity to develop PE skills in their outdoor provision and in the drier weather, the use of the trim trail develops gross motor skills.

At Wrawby St. Marys CE Primary, all subject leaders are aware of the starting points for their subjects in the Early Years and this is taken into account in the design of the bespoke whole school curriculum.  This is delivered in the Early Years through encouraging exploration in the classroom provision enhancements, trips and visitors and quality texts. These texts are chosen carefully to encourage children's speech, language and communication development.

We understand the importance of parental engagement and believe that our parents have a crucial role to play in their children's education. We work hard to create strong partnerships between home and school. We share children’s learning with parents on Tapestry and we encourage them to share personal experiences for their children from home. We track children’s reading progress through the use of Learning with Parents and we provide a weekly class update on our school website. We also operate a friendly and welcoming open-door policy where each child is met by the class teacher every morning and dismissed into the care of their adults at the end of the day.  

As part of the learning and teaching process, children are assessed in relation to their progress towards the Early Learning Goals. These judgements are made on the basis of accumulative observations and in-depth knowledge of the children acquired through on-going assessment. These on-going assessments are used to inform planning and next steps in teaching and learning for all children throughout the year.

Impact

All children join the Early Years at Wrawby St. Marys CE Primary, at varying starting points and our curriculum, and its delivery ensures all children make excellent progress. During their time with us, pupils make progress towards the national expectation for a good level of development at the end of the year. Pupils make good progress toward their age-related expectations both academically and socially, developing a sense of themselves, adopting effective learning behaviours before transitioning into Year One. Children develop their characteristics of learning and are able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with peers and adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing. Our high standards are due to our high expectations, carefully planned environment, enriched play-based curriculum, quality first teaching and the rigour of assessment.