Welcome to EYFS
As partnership schools, EYFS staff at Drayton Community Infant school and Nightingale Infant School work in collaboration to share best practice and co-plan our curriculum across both schools.
At Nightingale, our Early Years setting consists of four classes: Kingfisher and Robin Class; which is for our reception aged children, and our 2 nursery classes, Hatchlings and Fledglings. Children aged 2-3 attend our Hatchlings Class, whilst our children preparing to join Reception in the next academic year learn in Fledglings.
We are a free flow setting, meaning our Reception children can independently choose to move between our two classes, as well as our outdoor environments and spend large parts of the day learning together through play. We aim to provide our children with all the necessary skills and motivation needed to succeed and thrive throughout their time in education and beyond.
Birds of a feather flock together
As early years practitioners we understand the huge importance that a child’s first experience of school has upon their future, and we are committed to ensuring our children are inspired and supported to learn at their own pace in an inclusive, exciting and engaging environment.
Ultimately, we aim for all children will be inspired and motivated to actively participate in our curriculum: experiencing enjoyment and transitioning into Key Stage One with the confidence and character to meet the challenge of an ever changing world. We support our children right from the beginning to fulfil their true potential.
Our Curriculum
At Drayton and Nightingale, we provide our children with a rich and engaging EYFS curriculum that encourages high levels of curiosity, creativity, energy, concentration and persistence. We aim to provide opportunities for all of our children to develop as independent, confident, successful learners. Together we have developed six exciting topics that introduce our children to a variety of themes, knowledge and skills that promote a love of learning.
Our EYFS teachers and practitioners use a mixture of child-led and adult-led approaches to learning which is considered best practice in EYFS.
‘Practitioners carefully organise enabling environments for high-quality play. Sometimes, they make time and space available for children to invent their own play. Sometimes, they join in to sensitively support and extend children’s learning.’
Development Matters 2023
Through our curriculum, we adapt our learning environments and continuous provision to provide a rich range of activities that cover all of the seven areas of EYFS learning and development and provide opportunities for child-led learning. We use our observations to inform our weekly planning and plan for the children’s next steps in their personal learning journey.
Our themes are centred around high-quality texts, using the model of ‘Talk 4 Writing’ which is the base of the English curriculum in Key Stage One. Reading books and texts are prominent in our EYFS environments, enhancing our key texts with a variety of others to promote a real love of reading.
Phonics is taught daily through the whole school approach of Little Wandle. More information can be found on our Phonics page.
Maths is taught daily through a ‘Mastery’ approach that aims to develop the six key areas of early mathematics; cardinality and counting, comparison, composition, pattern, shape and space and measures. These areas provide a platform for everything children will encounter as they progress through their maths learning at primary school, and beyond.
Our school year is enhanced with extra curricular activities, special visitors and trips. In the past these have included: running club, tennis club, multi sports, yoga, Banham zoo, local walks, police visit, dentist visit, health and wellbeing ambassador, health and wellbeing week, science week and opportunities for children to care for chicks, ducks and butterflies.
Our Learning Environments
We are very proud to have such a range of learning environments for our children to explore. Each class supports the seven areas of the EYFS curriculum through carefully enhanced ‘zones’ within each room. Our book corners are updated termly and enhanced with a range of books that extend the children’s engagement and understanding of each topic. Our writing, maths, role play, small world, malleable and creative areas are enhanced daily to reflect and further the learning that takes place in class each week.
At Nightingale we have a shared canopy, which provides the children with a continuation of their classroom outdoors. Here children can engage with ‘messy play’ such as sand and water play and sensory trays that are linked to our learning topics.
Children engage with gross motor construction play outside, building their core strength, social and creative skills. Our children enjoy building their own obstacle courses or large scale models with materials such as crates, planks and safety bricks.
Our garden provides children with planting, growing and harvesting experiences throughout the year. The children are able to interact with the natural environment, discovering mini-beasts and noticing changes throughout the year.
Our mud kitchen allows children to explore concepts such as measures, reasoning and role-play. We are out in all weathers, children are encouraged to change into their waterproof trousers, coats and wellies.
Our playground is equipped with a variety of bikes and scooters, walking stilts and wobble boards for the children to explore moving and coordination. Our writing shed provides children with a sheltered space to continue their phonics and literacy learning, while our music area and outside wooden shelter is fully equipped with musical instruments and costumes to stimulate storytelling and creativity.
Our climbing frames allows children to develop their gross motor skills at their own pace while our sports equipment provides children with opportunities to develop and practice their fundamental movement skills taught in PE each week.
A typical day in EYFS
Throughout the day, our EYFS children take part in four, whole class, adult led group learning sessions (we call these Base Times) where we explore texts, ideas, events, and new concepts and knowledge in specific subject areas. We also engage our children in smaller adult guided activities throughout each week where we can teach, refine and assess specific skills.
During free flow, the children ‘Choose Our Own Learning’, this is called ‘COOL time’. This is a hugely important part of our day where the children engage with a range of carefully thought out enhancements and continuous provision that encourages them to be curious, challenge themselves, collaborate with peers, take risks, problem solve and expand their previous knowledge. The adults use this time to follow the children’s interests and move learning on in a way that is led by the child through careful questioning and suggestions.
Routines are important in ensuring our children feel confident and safe in their learning environment. Our daily routine is displayed and shared with the children at the start of each day.
Parents as Partners
At Drayton and Nightingale we recognise the importance of our parents’ commitment to their child’s learning. We use Tapestry, an online learning journal, to celebrate children’s achievements in school which can then be shared at home. We encourage our parents to use this platform to share achievements that the children make at home as well as topics and events of interest that can be shared and continued in school.
By working together with our parents, we ensure that we have a good understanding of a child’s needs and how we can best support them in school. We invite parents into school to both share in their child’s learning and successes, as well as provide sessions to support parents in understanding how aspects of the curriculum are taught and how they can support their child’s learning at home.
In the past these have included phonics mornings, maths café’s, reading café’s, craft afternoons and book looks. Together, with the parents as partners, we celebrate the incredible journey that our children make in the Early Years.
