Welcome to Little Joe’s
Welcome to our early years foundation stage (EYFS) which we have fondly called ‘Little Joe’s’. Little Joe’s consist of both Nursery and Reception classes.
Our EYFS vision for is through a whole child development approach we aim to achieve success for each individual irrespective of race, class, gender, culture, language or disability.
Through every action and interaction we are committed to providing the best possible start to school life, building the foundations for their future learning journeys.
Our EYFS Pedagogy
We follow the revised EYFS curriculum and careful sequencing helps children to build their learning over the time they are with us, from entry in to Nursery until the end of Reception.
We know that young children’s learning is often driven by their interests and adapt our planning to take this into account.
Through our strong emphasis on the characteristics of effective learning: playing and exploring, active learning, creating and thinking critically, we aim to give children the skills to become successful learners.
We put great emphasis on early reading and early maths skills. Adults share and talk about books with the children, aiming to develop a lifelong love of reading. There are frequent opportunities to develop reasoning skills in maths.
St Joseph’s is a “talk rich” school with a strong emphasis on communication and language. Through high quality provision and staff knowledge, we ensure that children get the best start on their journey to become confident in their speaking and listening skills.
The children experience a language rich environment, engage actively with frequent stories and are encouraged to share their ideas.
Children are taught new vocabulary to support their learning. Sentence stems are taught to enable children to articulate their ideas and explain their learning.
Our environment and curriculum reflect the diversity of our community enabling pupils to see positive role models. This supports their belief that they too can achieve.
We teach all children to have a growth mind-set, empowering them with the confidence to have a go, to learn from mistakes and to keep trying and improving.
Regular visits and events enrich our curriculum.
In the EYFS our environments are planned to enable pupils to develop independence. The resources are labelled clearly and accessible to the children, so that they are able to make choices and plan their own learning.
Children’s special educational needs are identified quickly and all children receive any extra help they need to progress well in their learn
Learning in continuous provision
Role Play
The role play are encourages imagination and creativity. It will be used as a story telling are and have a link to people who help us.
Children will be able to role play what they have been taught about different professions and use their knowledge within they play.
Children will be able to rebuild on their communication and language skills by interacting and listening to each other with adults promoting back and forth conversations.
Home Corner
The home corner allows children to make sense of their immediate world, as children are driven to copy what adults do. The home corner is a safe place where they can be in charge and their play can flourish.
Children have numerous opportunities to work together, express their feelings and use language to communicate roles and respond to one another’s needs and requests.
They will be able to re-enact their home life experiences through the use of a kitchen area, dining room, lounge, home office with telephone and laptop, make-up area, washing machine, clothes horse, ironing board and variety of books and magazines, paper and pencils for mark making.
Small World
The small world area is for children to create their own world and stories. They have access to a dinosaur small world area, dolls house and a variety of different animals and people to choose from.
Some small world play will be adapted due to child interest.
Art
The creative area is a space which allows them to enhance their expertise in both art and design technology. In this area the children have access to a vast range of mark-making materials, including paint, pencils, crayon, chalk and pens.
They also have the ability to enhance their fine motor skills by using hole punches, staplers, treasury tags and staplers to construct and adapt their masterpieces.
This is a space where the children are encouraged to explore with new materials, experiment with colours, textures and patterns and a place where they can extend what they have been learning within the provision, whether this is through writing, drawing or constructing.
Maths
The maths area allows children to develop their early mathematical skills. They are able to access a range of resources to support them with their counting and number recognition.
Numicon is a great resource the children can access to support them with their composition of number. They are able to develop their understanding of patterns through the use of peg boards, and other coloured objects.
They are able to build upon their knowledge of size and comparison using the resources available.
Construction
The construction area allows children to play, explore, actively learn, create and critically think. Children will build, balance and create and do not always have to have a goal in mind.
There is a selection of construction resources for the children to access. They have small construction building indoors where they can access Lego, small blocks, Mobilo, train tracks and Duplo.
They also have an outside construction area where they can access large building blocks, tyres, wheel barrows, cones, pipes and tubes.
Little Joe’s Long Term Plan
Download the Little Joe’s Long Term Plan as PDF document.