Early Years and Foundation Stage Curriculum

1. Early Years and Foundation Stage Curriculum • There are 3 Prime areas • Communication and Language • Physical Development • Personal and Social Education • There are then 4 specific areas: • Literacy • Mathematics • Understanding of the world • Design and Expressive Arts

2. National Curriculum • The National Curriculum consists of 10 statutory subjects and RE • Literacy, Numeracy and Science are ‘core’ subjects • History, Geography, Music, Art, Design and Technology, ICT, PE are ‘foundation’ subjects • RE is a statutory subject which follows different agreed syllabuses. At Gosfield we use the Essex agreed syllabus as a basis for our RE teaching. • Personal, Social and Health Education and Modern Foreign Languages are also mentioned in the national curriculum although they are not statutory. We teach both; PSHE being inherent within the curriculum and the ethos of the school and MFL taught in KS1 and KS2 in French and Spanish respectively.

3. Themes and Topics • We believe that children learn best when they are immersed in a subject. We have therefore taken the decision to build our curriculum around topics that will inspire and engage children, thus ensuring their interest and depth of learning. • The curriculum ensures coverage of the National Curriculum and EYFS requirements but at the same time is stimulating and exciting. • The topics are developed around a central theme of either history, geography or science. • We also look for ways to take learning out of the classroom or present it in different ways. This includes use of DVDs, ICT support, Forest school and Enterprise projects amongst many other things. • We try to give children the best experiences we can, including trips and visitors to school, multi-cultural weeks, parental involvement and community support. • As much of our work is taught through the topic as possible. There are, however, some aspects of teaching that we recognise need to be taught specifically sometimes, e.g. phonics. grammar, spelling, maths, RE and PE.

4. Specific teaching • Phonics is taught from Reception to year 3. • There are ‘sets’ for phonics so we are only teaching children of similar ability. • We hear every child read on a daily basis. • Grammar is taught as a specific subject at least once a week and is then integrated into the writing for the rest of the week. • Maths is taught as a separate lesson with a heavy emphasis on Number and the ability to manipulate number. • Where RE can not be linked to a topic it is taught as a separate subject. This may be as a weekly lesson or it could be a ‘mini’ topic in its own right. • PE is taught weekly and there are indoor and outdoor sessions. We encourage two hours of PE a week. • There are many after school clubs which enhance our curriculum provision from netball to ICT, Rugby to eco-club.

5. Whole school topic plan