In Medcroft Class, the children are at the heart of everything we do. We strive to give children the best possible start to their education journey, by delivering a unique and inspired early years curriculum for all.  Learning experiences are adapted to centre around the children’s needs, interests and development, allowing children to thrive in our care.

Our curriculum is underpinned by three key principles: adult led learning, child led learning and our provision in the learning environment.

 

Adult Led Learning 

Children in Reception will participate in daily Phonics and Maths sessions. You will be kept up to date with the focus of learning in these sessions through our weekly updates on Google Classroom and on the website. In addition, we have a termly theme that we focus on in class. Children will also complete adult led tasks during free flow which relate to specific learning objectives.

Child Led Learning and Our Provision 

The timetable in our classroom is designed in order that children have long periods of play to develop their ideas, extend their learning, use imagination, language and creativity. Much research had been done around the effectiveness of learning through play and how essential it is to children’s early development.

The indoor and outdoor areas are organised in order that the children can select any resources they choose to play with. The children can be outside if they want to, whatever the weather!

The classroom is set up with continuous tools for learning. These are the resources that are available during play each session for the children to become familiar with. They are set up so that the children can access them independently.

In class we are continually observing and assessing the children. Our planning is then based around the observations we make, including children’s interests or areas for development. We enhance certain areas of the provision based on this to extend play and engage the children further. All resources and learning areas are carefully thought out so that they offer the maximum learning opportunities for the children.

As the children play the adults are constantly observing to find the teachable moments, where they can intervene and extend the learning opportunities for the children; offering comments, suggestions, modelling language, introducing new ideas, demonstrating skills and scribing children’s ideas. The adult may choose not to intervene as the play often develops, engages and supports learning without an adult. In this case the role of the adult is to observe and assess where the children are and how they can continue to move learning on.

 

How will you be informed of your child’s progress?

The revised framework for Early Years has a greater focus on high quality interactions between adults and children. This means our staff will be dedicating our time to being ‘in the moment’ with our children, engaging and extending their learning experiences.

Parents will be informed of their child’s progress regularly throughout the year. This will include long-termly parent evenings, in which you will be updated in detail on your child’s progress across each area of the curriculum. Reception parents will also receive information at the start of the year from their baseline assessments, and at the end of the academic year when they are assessed against the Early Learning Goals.

We use the guidance documents, ‘Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage’ and ‘Birth to 5 Matters’ to assess children in the Early Years.