Early Years Foundation Stage
"Play is the highest form of research." Albert Einstein
The EYFS is about how children learn, as well as what they learn. Children need opportunities to develop their own play and independent exploration. This is enjoyable and motivating. - Development Matters 2021
At Rushey Mead Primary School, we create opportunities for children to play, learn, socialise and acquire language. We use quality texts and thematic topics to shape our learning journeys, whilst exploring the children's own interests and lines of enquiry. We build strong relationships with the children to support their learning to help them achieve in school and beyond. We recognise how important quality interactions are for our children and this forms part of our quality first teaching, both in the indoor and outdoor provision.
We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Guidance to promote a curriculum that teaches the children to be inquisitive and develop positive attitudes towards their learning that are instilled along with building confidence and resilience. We know that the EYFS settings really are the foundations of all learning, so we carefully plan what knowledge they need to enable them to be prepared and successful beyond the Early Years. At Rushey Mead Primary School we create life-long learners, and this starts in EYFS.
We are a No Outsiders school and this starts in EYFS where the children learn about different people, communities, families and cultures so that our children are learning how to be respectful from the moment they join our school. As highlighted in our whole school vision, the acquisition of the English language is integral for success, so our EYFS is a language rich environment and adults support and scaffold language usage with the children through their positive interactions.
When we give every child the best start in their early years, we give them what they need today. We also set them up with every chance of success tomorrow. - Development Matters 2021
Subject Leadership Team
Our Early Years subject leader is
Mr R Jariwala - Key Stage Assistant Headteacher
Evidence Me
At Rushey Mead we use an app called ‘Evidence Me’ to capture some of the fantastic Early Years Foundation Stage learning. Teachers take photos, add comments and provide voice overs about the learning and offer next steps to support future learning. These are shared with parents so that they are well-informed about their child’s learning and know how to help at home. We are able to comment in both English and Gujarati.
Parents and carers can download an app so that they can see the learning taking place at school. They can also upload their own achievements and share these with the school staff!
Below, you will find a guide explaining how to set up your app at home. School will have invited you to create an account by email.
Characteristics of effective learning
When working with the children in the Foundation Stage, staff look at three characteristics of effective learning which can be seen interwoven through the whole curriculum.
These characteristics are:
- Playing and Exploring
- Active Learning
- Creating and Thinking Critically
These are the key ways that children learn and develop across the curriculum and support every child at their own level of development to remain effective and motivated as a learner.
Prime and specific areas
There are seven areas of learning within the curriculum, these are made up of three prime areas of learning, consisting of Personal, Social and Emotional Development (otherwise known as PSE), Communication and Language (C&L) and Physical Development (PD). These include skills which the children will quickly develop through their relationships and experiences.
The other four areas of learning are the specific areas, Literacy Development, consisting of Reading and Writing (LD), Mathematical Development (MD), Understanding the World (UTW) and Expressive Arts and Design (EA&D).
For more information about Development Matters, please click the following link.