The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) comprises of the nursery / pre-school year and the Reception year. At Hopton CE Primary School, children in Reception learn through a range of different types of activities including fun, play-based activities, carefully planned and assessed by the Reception team of adults.
The EYFS curriculum is divided into 7 subject areas which are, in turn, divided into separate strands. At the end of Reception children are assessed according to whether they have achieved the ‘Early Learning Goal’ (ELG) for each strand.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
We have lots of opportunities to play and learn together, make new friends and build relationships. We become more confident when trying new things, helping and encouraging each other and finding what we need for our activities. We learn how to get on with each other, creating and following our class, school and playtime codes to keep our classroom, school and playground a happy place for everyone.
Communication and Language
We develop our attention, learning to focus for increasing lengths of time. We listen to our friends and to adults around school and develop our confidence when speaking to our friends and also in groups. We have lots of opportunities to talk about things we enjoy, are interested in and experiences we have had.
We have lots of opportunities to move in different ways including running, climbing, jumping, crawling. Our outdoor area gives us space to do this and we also practise moving carefully in our PE sessions which are lots of fun. Sometimes we practise using balls or beanbags to practise throwing and catching and playing games outside with our friends. Over the year we learn how to hold a pencil and other writing tools comfortably and to make clear marks including letter shapes and numbers. We share ideas on how to keep ourselves safe and healthy.
We love listening to and sharing stories, books and rhymes. During our phonics sessions we find lots of fun ways to learn the letter sounds and we use these to read and write simple words. We find lots of opportunities for writing, including making labels for things we have made, writing lists in the role-play area and creating our own stories. By the end of the year we are learning to read and write full sentences.
We practise counting forwards and backwards, starting at different numbers and we enjoy singing number songs and rhymes. We learn to read and write numbers up to 20 and beyond, putting these in order. We estimate and count objects and we learn to add, subtract and share amounts of objects, writing some number sentences using symbols like +,- and =. We play number games and solve number problems in practical ways. We compare the size, length and weight of a variety of objects and enjoy using shapes to create pictures and patterns, learning the shape names.
Understanding the World
We talk about things we enjoy and events we have experienced, such as birthdays, weddings, Christmas etc. We love exploring nature and often use the nature area at school to look for plants and insects, talking about what we cansee and any changes that we notice. We use our planting area to grow plants and vegetables. We develop our technology skills by using the computers, laptop and iPad in the classroom as well as the interactive white board and other technology such as the Beebots.
Expressive Arts and Design
We love singing song we know as well as composing our own songs together. We use musical instruments to explore making sounds and rhythms. We have lots of opportunities to create pictures and models using paint, pastels, crayons, chalks etc. and love to share our ideas with each other.