The curriculum of the Foundation Stage underpins all future learning by supporting, fostering, promoting and developing children’s learning and development across 7 key areas and 17 Early Learning Goals as set out in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years’ Foundation Stage:
Prime Areas
- language and communication
- physical development
- personal, social and emotional wellbeing
Specific Areas
- literacy – letters, sounds, reading and writing
- mathematics, reasoning and problem solving
- knowledge and understanding of the world
- expressive arts and design)
The Early Learning Goals within each Area of Learning outline what most children should be able to achieve by the time they leave the Reception class at the age of 5.
When planning and guiding children’s activities, careful consideration is given to the different ways that children learn. These “Characteristics of Learning” underpin all seven areas of learning and development:
- playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’;
- active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements;
- creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas,, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
Our approach emphasises the importance of children learning by doing, often through play in a rich educational environment, and outdoor play is very much encouraged. Our activities are designed to build upon and extend children’s knowledge, skills and interests. We follow the ‘Letters and Sounds’ scheme which teaches phonics and reading skills systematically and, by the end of the school year, children will be having daily lessons in maths and in literacy.
As you will see when you visit the Foundation Stage, our teachers and staff are skilled at providing an enabling and enriching environment for the children, which plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning throughout the Foundation Stage.
A detailed description of our curriculum for the Reception Class can be found in our Foundation Stage Policy.
Please see curriculum maps below.
Reception Class Yearly Overview
Terms 5 and 6 Topic Map