Our Early Years Foundation Stage

Our Dream

At Redhill, our dream in the Early Years Foundation Stage is to:

• nurture our children and support them in developing into happy, confident young learners who are kind citizens of the community, have a genuine thirst for learning and a fascination to develop their understanding of the world around them.
• provide our children with a safe, stimulating environment in which to learn and explore in a play-based approach, that allows children the space to take ownership of their learning through carefully-resourced provision areas.
• instill a life-long love of learning by stimulating imagination and creativity through a progressive and broad curriculum - that is adapted to meet the needs and interests of our children and links to the whole-school storybook approach - providing real-life contexts for learning and aids the growth of each individual’s sense of pride in their developing knowledge and understanding.
• support our children through warm, high-quality interactions that challenge their thinking, extend their learning and support them to apply explicitly-taught knowledge and skills, whilst encouraging encourage experimentation, critical thinking and problem-solving.
• give our children an opportunity to express themselves and be proud of who they are, whilst celebrating and respecting the differences within our community and the wider world.
• support the emotional well-being of each of our students, which is at the heart of our ethos as a school, and valuing each child as the special individual that they are, nurturing their self-esteem, confidence and self-awareness. 
• build strong foundations, rooted in holistic wellbeing and academic success, that allow our learners to succeed on their educational journey at Redhill and into later adult life.
• ensure every child is fully included and participates with a belief that they can succeed.

Implementation

Our progressive, ambitious curriculum follows our school story-based curriculum approach, which ensures children are exposed to high-quality, texts that inspire vocabulary development, an understanding of the world around them and ‘new worlds’. The curriculum allows children to know more, remember more and apply more to their independent, child-initiated learning experiences. It reflects the broad range of skills, knowledge and attitudes children need as foundations for good future progress. Children’s experiences over time are consistently and coherently arranged to build cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for their future learning and the careful planning of the curriculum, in partnership with the Year 1 teacher and Senior Leadership Team, ensures that it provides children with the knowledge and skills that they need to be ready to access and thrive in Year 1 and beyond.

The progression of the knowledge and skills are clearly detailed in our curriculum planning documents attached below to show the sequential learning experiences that build progressively from children’s prior knowledge and learning.

In the Early Years Foundation Stage, we believe in the power of play and value its crucial role in children’s development. At the heart of our provision are the Characteristics of Effective Learning. We provide a safe, stimulating environment that allows children to explore, discover, be challenged and achieve their very best, whilst developing their resilience and independence. Our provision enables high-quality interactions between children and adults and provides rich opportunities for modelling and expanding speech and vocabulary.

Here is an outline of the progression of skills across all areas of the provision in the Early Years Foundation Stage at Redhill.

British Values in the Early Years Foundation Stage

In accordance with the Department for Education, we actively promote British values in our Early Years Foundation Stage, and throughout school, to ensure our young people develop the foundations necessary to be prepared for life in modern Britain. The British Values represent the key principles and attitudes which we foster in our children through the school ethos and curriculum. In the Early Year Foundation Stage, we foster this ethos through circle times, PSHE, visits and visitors and modelling appropriate attitudes and behaviours.

We have high-expectations for all our children and expect them to be respectful and empathetic, valuing and contributing to our community. Children are encouraged to take responsibility for our school community. Additionally, developing our children’s understanding of the British Values is about equal rights for all and understanding that everybody's voice and opinions matter. This also provides opportunities for children to develop their self-confidence, self-esteem and self-awareness. Children learn the importance of regarding people of all faiths, races and cultures with respect and tolerance.

British Values underpin the ethos and curriculum in the Early Years Foundation Stage at Redhill as set out below.