At Grangetown Primary School, we provide a warm, nurturing and exciting start to your child’s learning journey. We inspire children to be curious, confident and independent learners through a rich blend of play, exploration and hands-on experiences. Our carefully designed indoor and outdoor environments encourage children to investigate, create, communicate and develop a lifelong love of learning. Filled with awe, wonder and fun, our EYFS curriculum helps every child build the skills, resilience and confidence they need to thrive both now and in the future.
At Grangetown Primary we aim to –
- Provide a happy, safe, stimulating and challenging programme of learning and development for the children to experience as they begin their journey through school.
- Provide a caring and inclusive learning environment, which is sensitive to the requirements of the individual child including those who have additional needs.
- Provide a broad, balanced, relevant and creative curriculum that will set in place firm foundations for further learning and development in Phase Two and beyond and enable choice and decision-making, fostering independence and self-confidence.
- Use and value what each child can do, assessing their individual needs and helping each child to progress.
- Develop excellent relationships with parents and carers to build a strong partnership in supporting their children.
The Early Years education we offer our children is based on the following principles:
- It builds on what our children already know and can do.
- It ensures that no child is excluded or disadvantaged.
- It offers a structure for learning that has a range of starting points, content that matches the needs of our children, and activities that provide opportunities for learning both indoors and outdoors.
- It provides a rich and stimulating environment.
- It acknowledges the importance of a full working partnership with parents and carers.
At Grangetown Primary School we track the learning and development of all children and adapt teaching strategies where necessary to ensure all children make progress. Early intervention is offered swiftly, to enable children to get additional, specialist help when required.
We have a distinct and balanced approach to our curriculum, and we combine securing strong foundations in Reading, Writing and Maths, with early years best practice. Learning through play, enabling environments, outdoor learning, and teaching though adult-child interactions. Language development, underpinned by high-quality adult-child interactions, is central to everything we do.
Language Development
A key feature throughout our provision is developing children’s language and vocabulary. We do this through the stories we read, our interactions with children, and our language rich environments. We provide lots of opportunities to develop children’s familiarity with stories, songs and rhymes throughout early years, from Kiddiwinkles to Reception. Everything we do is designed to promote language development, our learning environments, the structure of our day, the way focus activities and interventions are organised, and the high quality training we provide for all our staff.
Reading and Writing
Reading is central to our curriculum. Understanding and enjoyment of books is supported through daily storytime and sharing books in all year groups. We immerse our children in high quality books, involves lots of talk and role play. We develop children’s writing through spoken language and comprehension of stories. We use Drawing Club to engage the children in making their marks and giving meaning to what they write. Pre-writing skills are an important part of early writing development in the Early Years. Through fun activities such as ‘Dough Disco’ and ‘Squiggle While You Wiggle’ children strengthen the muscles in their hands, fingers and shoulders, develop coordination, and improve their pencil control. These engaging, movement based activities help children build the physical skills, confidence, and body awareness needed for mark-making, drawing, and eventually forming letters and writing independently. By combining music, movement, and play, children develop a strong foundation for future writing success. Handwriting is taught explicitly when the children are ready through daily sessions in Reception.
Phonics
Phonics teaching starts in Kiddiwnkles and Nursery, with listening and sound discrimination experiences and activities, as well as lots of songs and rhymes. We introduce Read Write Inc routines in the Summer Term of Nursery, with letter sounds introduced. Formal ‘Read Write Inc’ phonics lessons start at the beginning of Reception. This is taught systematically with daily sessions, in groups, so that teaching can be targeted to children’s levels. Children who need extra help to keep up are given individual tuition. We invite parents and carers into school to find out more about this early in the school year.
Maths
Maths is taught through concrete, meaningful experiences aimed at developing children’s conceptual understanding. We use the NCETM ’ Mastering Number’ programme in Reception, and this carries on through the school, supplemented by activities and experiences planned to support the specific learning needs of our children.
Other Curriculum Areas
Our curriculum is designed to give children the foundational knowledge and understanding needed to prepare them for Year 1 and beyond.
Outdoor Learning and Forest Schools
We place a strong emphasis on the importance of outdoor learning throughout our provision. This has many benefits, including contributing to health and wellbeing, and in developing the ‘whole child’. Children are often more confident outside, and outdoor play offers great opportunities for experiencing the natural world, and active learning and exploration, as well as elements of risk and challenge. We have exceptional outdoor learning environment. Our Early Years Classes also enjoy weekly sessions exploring and learning on our school field. The forest offers opportunities for outdoor learning in a natural environment. Children learn about teamwork, collaboration, problem solving and lots more, through a range of practical activities such as building shelters and dens, hunting for bugs and creating natural artwork.
From their different starting points all our children make good progress emotionally, academically, socially, physically and creatively. Knowledge, understanding and skills are secured and embedded and the children are fully prepared to transition into Phase Two.
