Children in our Early Years follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Our curriculum is centered on 3 Prime Areas of Learning:

1. Communication and Language.

2. Physical Development

3. Personal, Social and Emotional Development

We also provide provision and experiences through four specific areas which strengthen the prime areas. These are:

1. Literacy

2. Mathematics

3. Understanding the World

4. Expressive Arts and Design

We ensure there is a mix of child and adult initiated learning opportunities across both the prime and specific areas of learning. All pupils develop and learn at different rates and so our Early Years curriculum is purposefully flexible to meet the needs of all learners and, of course, take into account individual interests. Our Early Years teaching staff use interactions and observations to assess pupil's progress and plan next steps learning for pupils.

The Characteristics of Effective Learning underpin our curriculum. Through an enabling environment we ensure we provide meaningful opportunities for playing, active learning, creating and thinking critically. As pupils utilise and develop these characteristics, they become effective and motivated learners who demonstrate high levels of well-being and involvement.

We follow the Development Matters four guiding principles, focusing on the aspects of 'unique', 'positive relationships' and 'enabling environments', which lead to 'learning and developing'.

Our EYFS curriculum has been carefully planned to meet the needs of our children. It aligns to our KS1 curriculum so children are supported to make a smooth transition to the National Curriculum.

Staff use Arc Pathway to track assessments and provide individualised next steps for each pupil.   This system enables staff to know where each pupil is on their learning pathway.

EYFS Curriculum Overviews

Nursery  - example unit of work

Reception - example unit of work

The EYFS Environment at Greet

Assessment to support learning

Assessment plays an important role in helping practitioners, parents and caregivers to understand how their children are progressing, understanding their individual needs and how best to support them.

At Greet we use formative assessment to identify our children's next steps in learning, as well as their interests, which enables us to plan the teaching and learning experiences for each child.

We use a number of assessment tools to support practitioners with gathering this information:

WellComm language assessments are carried out during the autumn term to help identify children who need additional support with their communication and language development.

ARC Pathway assessments are carried out termly to enable practitioners, parents and caregivers to identify children's strengths as well as their next steps in learning. Practitioners in EYFS use ARC Pathway to carry out and record observations of children achieving milestones.

Reception Baseline is carried out during the first six weeks of the autumn term. This is a statutory requirement.

Early Learning Goals

The Early Learning Goals (ELGs) are the goals or targets children are expected to achieve at the end of their reception year.

They have been created by the Department for Education. They are not the curriculum, but an end point measure of what a child should be demonstrating at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage. There are 17 ELGs across all the areas of learning. 

At Greet, we have created our own Nursery Learning Goals to provide clarity to practitioners, parents and carer givers in understanding the targets children are expected to achieve at the end of their nursery year.