Curriculum Information

Early Years Foundation Stage

The Early Years Foundation Stage is a time of great change for both children and their parents. The foundation for future school life is achieved through fostering key learning skills in every child such as curiosity, confidence to explore & resilience; enabling every child to establish positive relationships with peers and adults and crucially to provide a safe and secure environment where the relationships between every child, their teacher, other adults and parents are strong.

There are seven areas of learning and development in the Foundation Stage curriculum that are equally important and are inter-connected.

The three ‘Prime’ areas are particularly important for fostering children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn and form relationships. These prime areas begin to develop quickly in response to relationships and experiences, and run through and support learning in all other areas.

The Prime areas are:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Communication and Language
Physical Development

The four ‘Specific’ areas include essential skills and knowledge. They grow out of the prime areas, and provide important contexts for learning.

The Specific areas are:

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design

Each area of learning and development is implemented through purposeful play and a mix of adult-led and child-initiated activity. Play is essential for children’s development, building their confidence as they learn to explore, to think about problems, and relate to others. Children learn by leading their own play, and by taking part in play which is guided by adults. They have opportunities to learn indoors and outdoors and learning is carefully planned around their own interests; including exploration of the school grounds, walks and local area trips, visitors from outside of school and much more. Children in the Foundation Stage also have access to Modern Foreign Languages and Religious Education through planned topic work.

Physical Development, Health & Wellbeing

Physical education develops the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, so that they can perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. These include dance, games, gymnastics, swimming and water safety, athletics and outdoor adventure activities.

]Physical education promotes an understanding in children of their bodies in action. It involves thinking, selecting and applying skills and promotes positive attitudes towards a healthy lifestyle. Thus we enable them to make informed choices about physical activity throughout their lives.

The aims of PE are:

to enable children to develop and explore physical skills with increasing control and co-ordination;
to encourage children to work and play with others in a range of group situations;
to develop the way children perform skills and apply rules and conventions for different activities;
to increase children’s ability to use what they have learnt to improve the quality and control of their performance;
to teach children to recognise and describe how their bodies feel during exercise;
to develop the children’s enjoyment of physical activity through creativity and imagination;
to develop an understanding in children of how to succeed in a range of physical activities and how to evaluate their own success;
to promote the raising of pupil’s self esteem at all times;
to raise the profile of the school within the local area and develop people’s confidence in it.

The Wider Curriculum

Educational visits to a variety of venues are used to enrich our curriculum. We also invite different groups and individuals – e.g. members of the local community, charity representatives, storytellers, artists, musicians and environmental groups – into school to talk to and work with the children.

Enrichment weeks, when the whole school works on a particular focus such as ‘ASHA Week’ or ‘Heritage Week’, take place each term.

Weekly whole school singing assemblies support class based music teaching using Charanga. Parents & carers can arrange for their children to learn to play the guitar, woodwind and or the keyboard/piano with peripatetic music teachers.

A variety of lunchtime and after school clubs are open to the children in different year groups. This year these include: hockey, cooking, healthy sports, maths, zumba, choir, netball, football, and dance.

We encourage the children actively to look after the school and wider environment. The outdoor curriculum and environmental education are a strong focus for us.

The school has a tradition of supporting charitable causes, encouraging the children to develop a sense of responsibility towards those less fortunate than themselves and also of participating in National Awareness days and week.

Farndon Fields Primary School

Farndon Fields Primary School

Curriculum Information