At Wylam First School we believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences between birth and age five have a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right. Good parenting and high quality early learning together provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.

In Early Years we follow the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage which is mandatory for all early years providers.

We operate a 2 year rolling programme when planning with a ‘loose’ theme focus which can be and is regularly altered based on the interests of the children. The themed approach covers both Nursery and Reception so that joined activities can be planned across the year.
The Early Years Curriculum also delivers our whole school intent which focus on STEM, Creative Development and Physical and Mental Well-being which is woven into the activities planned and the learning environment.

Phonics
We use Little Wandle for our phonics scheme throughout the school.

Reading
In Nursery we share a wide range of books with the children and send home books from our library for children to share with their parents. In Reception children begin to take home their own home/school reading book. Initially this will be a picture book to discuss but this soon moves on to our reading scheme which supports the phonics teaching in the classroom along with the development of sight vocabulary.

Talk for Writing
We follow the Talk for Writing programme in Early Years to support the development of communication and language which then moves on to the understanding of story structure and story writing.

Maths
As a school we use White Rose Maths for our Maths curriculum. Although there is currently not an Early Years focus for this we use the same resources and techniques in Early Years with a huge focus on language development for problem solving and reasoning.

PSED
We follow PSHE Association across our school and also focus on No Outsiders to teach our Equalities education.

EYFS Statutory Framework
No Outsiders
Progress Matters