Our foundation stage begins at 4 years when the children start in reception. At Crudgington Primary, we strongly believe children learn best when they are actively engaged and ready to learn. Positive relationships with both parents and children set solid foundations for a partnership in learning.

In our Early Years Foundation Stage, we implement our intent through:

• Equipping the provision with a wide range of resources for children to access which develops their learning across the seven areas of the EYFS curriculum.
• Providing challenging, structured and unstructured activities to children throughout the day.
• Extending children’s experiences and vocabulary through the topics, themes and stories we plan for.
• Regularly assessing children through observations and interactions to swiftly identify any children who may need their knowledge extending or consolidating. Summative assessments are carried out termly to track children’s progress against our curriculum outcomes supported by Development Matters. These outcomes are monitored and moderated through our Trust to ensure consistency. All children are discussed and targeted during termly pupil progress meetings and next steps are identified and reviewed.

• Early identification of specific children who may need support and targeted interventions.
• Trained adults to deliver regular, high-quality interventions to support children’s communication and language and gross motor skills.

• Adults supportively scaffolding learning to develop engaged, confident and independent children.
• Adults promoting effective communication through open-ended questions which model rich vocabulary.
• Liaising with all stakeholders, both at the start and throughout the child’s journey, to ensure everyone is working together to meet the needs of each child.
• Delivering daily phonics sessions through the Little Wandle programme with additional targeted support for children, where needed. Termly phonics pupil progress analysis takes place using the Little Wandle heatmaps to identify the children needing additional keep-up sessions. When children begin to take part in reading practice sessions, the books that they read are carefully matched to the both the Little Wandle programme and the child’s ability.
• Daily maths sessions using the Number Sense Early Number scheme and opportunities to develop their number reasoning skills are taught daily.

At the end of their reception year, each child is assessed against the early learning goals to provide a profile of their achievements and abilities. These profiles are shared with the next class teacher to ensure that these foundations are built upon in year 1.