EYFS Curriculum Intent

At Holy Family Catholic School we believe in providing a secure foundation for future learning and development for our children. Our EYFS curriculum allows children to develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative thinkers. We aim to provide a fun, secure, challenging and rich educational environment that enables each individual to thrive! Reception and Nursery work closely with each other to ensure continuity and consistency between the foundation stage. Our Mission statement ‘we grow, learn and succeed in the footsteps of Jesus’ is at the heart of everything we do.

We place a strong emphasis on the religious, spiritual, moral and cultural development of all our pupils. Learning at Holy Family is Values-based. We have four School Values; We care about respect, Passionate about learning, Growing our hearts and minds and Together we succeed. Our values shape how we behave, what we say, how we build relationships and how we learn. They are incorporated in every aspect of life at Holy Family. Every child is recognised as a unique individual. We celebrate and welcome the differences within our school community

EYFS curriculum Implementation

The Holy Family EYFS curriculum is designed to develop the characteristics of effective learning:

● Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

● Active learning – children keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy their achievements.

● Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.

We use a Growth Mindset approach to promote positive attitudes to learning which reflect the values and skills needed to promote responsibility for learning and future success.

Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate local traditions, learning new skills to enable the children to take an active role in events throughout the year.

The EYFS framework includes 7 areas of learning and development that are equally important and inter-connected. However, 3 areas known as the prime areas are seen as particularly important for igniting curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building children’s capacity to learn. The Holy Family EYFS Curriculum engages all children and ensures that all children make good progress from their starting points. A number of key resources are used to support the development of the curriculum including Development Matters, White Rose Maths, Letters and Sounds, ‘The Way, The Truth, The Life’ and WELLCOMM.

Where possible the children’s own interests are used by the adults to engage the children in higher level thinking and deeper learning. Child initiated learning is valued and encouraged.  Each area of learning and development is implemented through planned, purposeful play, and through a mix of adult- led and child initiated activities.  At Holy Family Primary School we believe that the whole curriculum can be covered in a well planned outdoor environment, and that there is some learning that can only take place outdoors. The children have the right to the outdoor environment all the year round and access to the area is available daily throughout the session with constant adult supervision and interaction.

Parents are valued as first educators and every effort is made to inform them of the EYFS curriculum whilst providing them with the tools to continue in learning at home. Parents are encouraged to share their child’s achievements through ‘WOW’ moments and these are celebrated within school. Each week we have focus children where parental contribution is key to observing and planning children’s next steps. Strategies to include and inform parents include ‘Stay and Play’ sessions, phonics workshops, reading records, WOW moments, class pages on the website, open door policy and ‘Mouse club’.

EYFS Curriculum Impact

We want each child to get the best possible start in life and to be ready to thrive in KS1. At Holy Family we do this by ensuring ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning process. Staff observe pupils and these observations are used to plan next steps.

We use a paper based learning journey to record assessments which is also shared by parents. We also have ‘Our Faith Journey’ and Reception has individual writing books.

At the end of EYFS, staff completes the EYFS profile for each child. Pupils are assessed against the 17 early learning goals.

The EYFS team meet for regular meetings and receive necessary training linked to the SDP .Teachers attend in house and external moderations and attend regular pupil progress mettings to ensure progress is being made for each individual child.

The EYFS leads are committed to raising standards by attending relevant CPD and ensuring each child at Holy Family has the best start on their school journey.