Learning in the Foundation stage

Reception is where the excitement begins! In the Foundation stage children learn together in an environment, which is developed around the children’s interests. We pride ourselves on being an exciting and engaging place to be - encouraging our children to be independent learners through a range of practical activities. We follow a thematic curriculum which allows us to be creative with our lessons and let the children lead their own learning.
As our Foundation Stage children enter the classroom they learn primarily through a variety of play and real-life experiences. Our teaching is delivered through carefully planned tasks and guided key jobs. The children access their environment freely; however they understand they must complete 'key jobs' throughout the week which will scaffold and extend their learning. Their development is tracked through detailed, daily observations and child-initiated interaction. This information is then transferred into your child's personal learning journey - a diary of information and photographs. We use these to record individual interests, progress and plan the next steps of your child's learning.

The EYFS Curriculum

In Reception, our Foundation Stage children follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS). This curriculum is based upon four themes and principles.

The Unique Child - We understand that every child is an individual child who is capable in their own right. The holistic child has a variety of needs that need meeting over their time in the Foundation Stage.

Positive Relationships - Social interaction is key to children’s development. Children become strong, independent learners; as well as scaffolding their learning through positive social interaction.

Enabling Environments - Providing a safe, secure and stimulating base for your children is key to their development. The framework allows for experiences that respond to the child’s individual needs/ interests; as well as developing a strong partnership between practitioners, parents and carers.

Learning and Development - Children develop and learn in different ways. The framework covers the education and care of all children in early years provision, including children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Early Learning Goals

Within ‘Development Matters’ there are 3 prime areas of learning and 4 specific areas. This framework provides the basis of how we structure the setting, the activities and opportunities we provide; as well as how we assess your child’s development. For each of these areas your child will have an ‘Early Learning Goal’ to work towards.

Prime Areas

• Communication and language
• Personal, social and emotional development
• Physical development

Specific Areas

• Literacy
• Problem solving, numeracy and reasoning
• Understanding the World
• Expressive arts and design

Characteristics of Effective Learning

• Playing and exploring
• Active learning
• Creating and thinking critically

We have high expectations of all our pupils and we aim to ensure all make expected or above progress in reading through consistent, systematic phonics teaching and high quality reading materials. Phonics is a body of knowledge and skills on how the alphabetic system works, essential to the beginning of a successful reader’s journey. By the time a child leaves Key Stage 1, we aim for them to be secure in the skills of decoding and word recognition; a fluent reader ripe for the development of higher order reading for meaning skills.

At Holy Trinity, we follow Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.

Please read below additional information regarding our phonics scheme.

Children learn to read by:

• using phonics as the only route to decoding
• learning to say the phonic sounds
• learning to blend phonic sounds to read words
• increasing their fluency in reading sounds, words and books
• reading fully decodable books that are consistent with their phonic knowledge
• not using other strategies to work out words (including guessing words, deducing meaning from pictures, grammar, context clues or whole word recognition)
  reading books in a progressive sequence until they can decode unfamiliar words confidently.

 For more information, please see the following links:

Little Wandle resources for parents

Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1
Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 2
Phase 3 sounds taught in Reception Spring 1
How we teach blending

Early Reading Resources to support your child at home can be found below.