Intent, Implementation and Impact statement

At York Campus Nursery the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is designed to encourage our children to become independent, confident and enquiring learners.  We recognise through discussion and working in partnerships with parents and carers our children’s prior understanding and learning and this provides us with an effective baseline to be able to start learning from what a child already knows and helps us to build close relationships through our key worker and buddy system. The children’s personal, social and emotional development are at the heart of our curriculum as we strongly believe that for any child to be able to reach their learning potential this can only be done from a strong base of nurturing relationships and self-belief.

Each child is unique and an individual learner that learns at their own rate and has their own schemas and learning interests. Therefore, we provide opportunities and activities for children to follow their own interests and to learn at their own pace. Our aim is for children to be confident learners who are able to draw on their own strengths and to this end we support and encourage resilience, so that children have a “have a go attitude”.

As a diverse setting we celebrate our similarities and differences and promote a love for learning.  We know that our children have a thirst for new and different experiences and try to support this with our continuous provision both inside and outside that provides opportunities for children to investigate, experiment and revisit activities that support the development of the three characteristics of effective teaching and Learning – play and exploring - active learning and creating and thinking. We also try to promote smooth transitions between rooms in the setting through visits and communication between key person / parents  and between settings and  schools by encouraging visits from school and by giving the next settings an understanding of a child’s needs, knowledge and skills through a  summative /transition to school report.

Our children learn through both adult led and child-initiated activities. Our monthly staff meetings ensure that we can plan for all areas of the EYFS but we are also flexible so that we can use child led interest to “plan in the moment “activities.  We use these meetings to discuss individual children’s attainment levels and next steps ensure that all children are able to develop and learn at a level that is appropriate to their needs.

As part of the statutory framework we undertake Two-year-old progress reviews – these are undertaken with input from parents to ensure that by working in partnership with parents we can support child development in the three prime areas and ascertain whether some extra support and help may be needed. These reports are shared with parents and practitioners in the next age group as children transfer from the baby unit to the Nursery unit in the setting.

Our daily routine ensures that practitioners can plan and implement activities across the nursery using all seven areas of the EYFS

• Personal, social and emotional development is supported in all children by adults modelling appropriate behaviour and expectations. Encouraging children to talk about emotions and empathy helps to support and develop empathy, understanding and emotional literacy.  Behaviour management plans can also be used to support children.
• Self- help skills such as personal hygiene, dressing and undressing helps to develop skills that allow children to become more independent and confident in their own abilities
• Story times and singing times help with reading, listening and vocabulary development for communication development.
• Outside activities such as running, climbing, hopping, riding bikes helps to develop gross motor skills whereas fine motor skills are enhanced by activities such as threading, drawing and painting
• Maths activities through number games, jigsaws and practical maths ideas for numeracy development
• Our literacy areas provide opportunities for mark making and developing future writing skills 
• Activities such as visits from people working in other areas of the University help children to develop their knowledge and understanding of the world and cultural capital development
• There are focused  creative activities that are both child and / or adult led to ensure imaginative play, through role play and small world play and arts and design

• English as a second language children are given time and space in a language rich environment to acquire, assimilate and accommodate new vocabulary.
• Story times, songs and number songs are designed to help to develop listening and attention skills, learn new vocabulary and number concepts
• Phonics time for the preschool children with activities that help them for example to distinguish between different sounds, initial sounds in words, oral blending and segmenting. We use Letter and Sounds phase one phonics to support this and this in turn sets a good framework to support children on building good foundations for future reading outcomes. Children also have access to a wide variety of books that support all areas of learning.

Early years practitioners use ongoing and regular, group and individual observations, photographs, practitioner knowledge and videos to help us to record a child’s development using both “birth to five” and “development matters” to support us with this. Parents and carers too are encouraged to contribute via our online assessment journal regarding  events and activities that happen outside the setting to give a more holistic view of the child.  Our online assessment tool  also helps us to have an informed knowledge base of a child’s learning and development, using the EYFS as a tool to inform potential next steps and areas of interest to promote, embed and develop further learning.  

Our setting SENCOs  work with all practitioners and the Nursery manager to help assess and support children with SEND through the  use of My Agreed Outcomes documents, working in partnership with parents, and outside agencies such as speech and language therapists and the Area SENCO team as deemed necessary.  The SENCO  also advises Early Years Practitioners on suitable strategies to support the children to achieve their learning outcomes.