Intent:

At St Pius X, we believe that the Early Years is pivotal to a child’s continuing education. We foster a love of learning through a range of engaging, inspiring and open-ended activities focusing around a termly topic, building on the children’s interests. Learning through play is at the heart of our Early Years setting, with a range of hands-on activities which make learning relevant to the child, whatever their individual need. The Early Years focuses on the 7 areas of learning in the Early Years Framework, with the first 3 Prime areas holding a significant focus (Personal Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language, Physical Development, Literacy, Maths, Understanding of the World and Expressive Arts and Design.) Everything we do in the Early Years, is underpinned by our six values at St Pius so that we can support every child to believe, learn and grow. 

Implementation: 

We recognise that play underpins all learning and development for young children.  Most children play spontaneously although some may need adult support. It is through play that children develop intellectually, creatively, physically, socially and emotionally.  By providing well planned experiences based on children’s spontaneous play, both indoors and outside we support our children to learn with enjoyment and challenge. 

The Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning underpin all of our activities in Reception alongside the four guiding principles  from the Early Years Statutory Framework:

• a unique child
• positive relationships
• enabling environments
• learning and development

We use the Early Years Statutory Framework and  Development Matters to form the skeleton of our curriculum. To this we add child-led interests, real - life experiences, language rich quality texts and local community links to build a tailored curriculum  for the pupils at St Pius X. Please click here for this year’s topics.  

We use a balance of adult-led (child working with the adult) and child-initiated (child chosen) activities with a focus on authentic and high-quality back and forth interactions. 

Observations undertaken by all practitioners are used to plan children’s next steps of learning in their individual learning journeys both on Tapestry and in paper form. These observations inform the judgements made for the EYFS profile.  

At St Pius X Catholic Primary School we ensure that the requirements of the EYFS are met through all seven areas of learning and development, in order for children to make progress towards the early learning goals. Progress is tracked termly and parents are encouraged to contribute to their child’s assessment using Tapestry. 

Impact: 

Our pupils leave Reception with a strong sense of self and an awareness of others' feelings. Our children enter Year 1 with a passion for learning and with a natural curiosity for learning. 

Please click here to see our EYFS in action.