The first year of school is a very special time for children and at Trinity CE Primary School we aim to make them feel happy, safe, secure and confident in their learning environment. We aim to promote a love of learning within a positive and stimulating environment, fostering mutual care and respect and challenging the whole child to their full potential.
In Reception, the children will complete the final year of the Early Years Foundation Stage, providing children with secure foundations for lifelong learning. It builds upon the learning that children have already gained from their families and pre-school experiences and ensures children receive exciting learning opportunities tailored to their individual stage of development. The Foundation Stage curriculum contains seven areas of learning and development:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Communication and Language
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
The children will explore a huge variety of activities, which support their development across all areas of learning. Our approach is based upon the principle that young children learn best through play and active learning. Play enables children to explore their ideas, invent their own goals, learn to interact with others, solve problems, consolidate and apply their learning, and so much more. These skills reflect the Characteristics of Effective Learning:
- Playing and Exploring
- Active Learning
- Creating and Thinking Critically
Through our planning we ensure that these characteristics are thread into the learning experience that we provide both indoors and outdoors. The children are given the opportunity to experiment, explore and investigate, thus encouraging them to become resilient independent learners. There are broad themes that we plan to explore each half term, although we are regularly guided by the children’s particular interests. Learning is planned to enhance the children’s skills through play opportunities. The children will receive a combination of teacher input and continuous provision opportunities both indoors and outdoors. Learning is planned to encourage children to develop their learning independently through exploration and challenge. The children are encouraged to ask questions, talk through their ideas and discuss what they are doing, with the focus being on the process of learning and not the outcome.
Our outdoor provision ensures that children can fully immerse in all types of learning, whether this is developing their gross motor skills, or learning about living creatures or sharing a story in the cosy den area. Outdoor learning has been shown to inspire children and to reconnect them with nature.
In the EYFS we work in partnership with parents and carers to support the children with their learning development. We value and share all of the children’s home achievements by celebrating these, and displaying them on our ‘Wow Tree’ in the classroom. Parents are the most important people in their children's early lives. Children learn about the world and their place in it through their conversations, play activities, and routines with parents and families. By working together, we can enhance the children's learning and development.
At Trinity CE Primary school, we celebrate all children and recognise that all children are unique and learn in different ways and at different rates. We provide a rich, stimulating and enabling environment inside and outside. We ensure each child can learn and develop well by responding to individual needs, based on what they already know and that are clearly sequenced and progressive. We hope to inspire the children to become happy, confident, self-assured, resilient, well-rounded individuals who have a love for learning and discovery.