Early Years
Welcome to Early Years at Ascot Heath Primary School. Please have a look at our policy and photos below.
Early Years Policy
Intent
The Early Years are a crucial starting point in children’s education and needs to be valued as such. Early child development sets the foundation for lifelong learning, behaviour, and health. Through the experiences children have in Early Years at Ascot Heath Primary School, the children’s capacity to learn is shaped, they are taught to build relationships and they are supported to be resilient towards daily challenges.
School Vision
Ascot Heath Primary School – Preparing our children for all of their tomorrows.
Ascot Heath Primary School is highly ambitious for every single one of its pupils:
Where everything we do together every single day strives towards excellence in education - nurturing Inquisitive, highly motivated and courageous learners;
Where every child and adult is valued and respected equally and empowered to succeed;
and
Where we celebrate the uniqueness of everyone in our school community, give everyone the chance to shine, and prepare our children for all of their tomorrows and the future
Implementation
At Ascot Heath, we recognise that play is the prime medium through which young children learn and that all children are constantly learning. Our whole school quest approach provides a cohesive, relevant and motivating platform where each play based quest is carefully co-planned between the Early Years practitioners and the children. This joint planning means that prior knowledge and children’s interests are used as the foundations for the quest along with teacher curriculum knowledge.
Our Exploration Time is planned carefully to facilitate our children to think creatively alongside others as well as independently. They communicate with others and explore and solve problems. Children’s individual interests and needs are responded to in the moment through rich adult interactions, scaffolding the children’s learning, resulting in spontaneous learning being celebrated and built upon. Exploration Time is punctuated with adult led focused tasks.
Weekly Rainbow Challenges are shared with the children to challenge them to independently embed the skills and knowledge being taught in phonics, maths, writing and creativity. This facilitates the children to take ownership of their learning and be proud of their achievements. Learning Detectives are key to identifying and celebrating with their class the learning that is taking place during Exploration Time.
Children take part in Forest School activities fortnightly with our Forest School teacher. Forest Schools is an outdoor educational opportunity during which children visit our woodland area giving them the chance to learn about the natural environment, how to manage risks and most importantly, to use their own initiative to solve problems and co-operate with others. Through various activities and play children learn boundaries of behaviour; both physical and social, grow in self-confidence and become self-motivated. As a result of visiting the woodland regularly children develop an appreciation and knowledge of the natural environment as well as discovering their own strengths and contributing to a team. In addition to Forest School the children have daily access during Exploration time to a well-resourced outdoor area. This provides them with a variety of learning opportunities that link specifically to the Early Years Specific and Prime areas of learning.
We aim to involve parents and support them in their understanding of the Early Years Curriculum and how their child is progressing by giving them access to their online learning journey Evidence Me and allowing them to contribute their own observations. A ‘Wow moment’ board enhances this and allows parents to acknowledge their achievements from home. We encourage parents to attend annual information workshops and stay, play and learn sessions to help them engage with their child’s learning. We welcome family members into the setting to work with the children and share their skills on topics that are relevant to our Quests.
Children’s learning is evidenced through Evidence Me, a RWI book and an individual folder of key learning. Evidence Me observations are recorded twice a week and detail children’s individual learning in Maths and Exploration Time. Other observations may be recorded about the group rather than an individual.
The children’s learning is also enhanced with interactive displays linked to the quests and wow moment board. A timeline is created of the children’s learning throughout the year so that children can review their learning from throughout the year.
Impact
Through the implementation we aim that children achieve the Early Learning Goals at the end of the year to gain Good Level of Development (GLD). Judgements are moderated both in school and externally with local schools. The Development Matters guidance is used when planning to ensure children have opportunities to practice the smaller stepping stones and track children’s progress towards GLD.
We intend that at the end of the year children are ready to transition from the Early Years curriculum to the National Curriculum in Year 1. They demonstrate curiosity, independence, resilience and other characteristics of effective learning.
Assessment
At the beginning of the year the children are assessed using the Reception Baseline, this provides a starting point for planning and teaching. Early Years practitioners also use this time to get to know the children’s interests, backgrounds and prior knowledge.
Throughout the year observations are recorded and reviewed using the online platform Evidence Me, these are shared with the parents/carers. During termly pupil progress meetings practitioners use the accumulation of these observation and their teacher judgement to determine the progress the children are making. If a child is not making expected progress interventions are planned in and then reviewed and amended. Children’s phonic knowledge is tracked through regular Read, Write Inc assessments. Interventions then take place for children not making expected progress. At the end of the academic year a school report is shared with parents which outlines their child’s achievement against the Early Learning Goals. Children’s achievements are formulated through teacher judgement.
