EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage)

Our Reception and Nursery classes are part of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). We use the indoor and outdoor environments to support play and learning. All children have access to the outside throughout the day during independent learning or adult-directed tasks.

The curriculum is underpinned by the 3 characteristics of Effective Learning:

Playing and Exploring: Engagement

Finding out and exploring
Playing with what they know
Being willing to ‘have a go’

Active Learning: Motivation

Being involved and concentrating
Keeping trying
Enjoying achieving what they set out to do

Creating and Thinking Critically

Having their own ideas
Making links
Choosing ways to do things

Key Learning Areas

The EYFS Curriculum consists of 7 key areas of learning:

3 Prime Areas:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development - developing confidence and independence as part of a group. Learning to take turns, show awareness of their own abilities. Develop perseverance and empathy.
Communication and Language - communicating with one another through speaking and listening skills. Taking turns when speaking, speaking in front of a group. Using language to retell or make up stories.
Physical Development - improving control and coordination of the body and learning to move and handle equipment efficiently. Developing gross and fine motor skills. Learning to move in different ways. How to keep healthy. Developing fine motor control for handwriting and letter formation. Taking care of own physical needs e.g. using the toilet and managing own clothing.

4 Specific Areas

Literacy - developing early skills in reading and writing. Using phonics to read and write words and sentences.
Maths - learning about number, counting, quantity, measurement, shape and space.
Understanding the World - investigating and beginning to understand the things, places and people around the local community. Showing an awareness of other cultures and religions.
Expressive Arts and Design - finding ways to communicate by using colour, shape, sound, texture, dance, movement, role play and stories.

Assessment and Reporting

All children have an ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’ Learning Journey scrapbook in which teachers and staff collect observations on the children and their achievements. These books are available in the classroom for children to look at.

The progress of each child is assessed termly to check that they are working within the expected range for their age. At the end of Reception all teachers complete statutory assessments of the children against the ‘Early Learning Goals’

Phonics - Phase 1

Nursery – Phase 1 Letters and Sounds

Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects. Each aspect contains three strands: Tuning in to sounds (auditory discrimination), Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing) and Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension).

It is intended that each of the first six aspects should be dipped into, rather than going through them in any order, with a balance of activities. Aspect 7 will usually come later, when children have had plenty of opportunity to develop their sound discrimination skills.

Aspect 1 - General sound discrimination - environmental

The aim of this aspect is to raise children's awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

Aspect 2 - General sound discrimination - instrumental sounds

This aspect aims to develop children's awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

Aspect 3 - General sound discrimination - body percussion

The aim of this aspect is to develop children's awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

Aspect 4 - Rhythm and rhyme

This aspect aims to develop children's appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

Aspect 5 - Alliteration

The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

Aspect 6 - Voice sounds

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot's mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice - /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

Aspect 7 - Oral blending and segmenting

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

To practise oral blending, the teacher could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

The activities introduced in Phase 1 are intended to continue throughout the following phases, as lots of practice is needed before children will become confident in their phonic knowledge and skills.

Phonics - Phase 2

Reception Autumn Term – Phase 2

In Phase 2, letters, including the letter name and the sound they make are introduced one at a time. A set of letters is taught each week, in the following sequence:

Set 1: s, a, t, p
Set 2: i, n, m, d
Set 3: g, o, c, k
Set 4: ck, e, u, r
Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

As soon as each set of letters is introduced, children will be encouraged to use their knowledge of the letter sounds to blend and sound out words. For example, they will learn to blend the sounds s-a-t to make the word sat. They will also start learning to segment words. For example, they might be asked to find the letter sounds that make the word tap from a small selection of magnetic letters.

Words that are referred to as Tricky words are also taught: the, to, no, go, into and I. These are not decodable and children have to remember how to read and spell them.

Phase 2 Set 1 Letters and Words

s, a, t, p

at, a, sat, pat, tap, sap, as

Phase 2 Set 2 Letters and Words

i	it, is, sit, sat, pit, tip, pip, sip
n	an, in, nip, pan, pin, tin, tan, nap
m	am, man, mam, mat, map, Pam, Tim, Sam
d	dad, and, sad, dim, dip, din, did, Sid

Phase 2 Set 3 Letters and Words

g	tag, gag, gig, gap, nag, sag, gas, pig, dig
o	got, on, not, pot, top, dog, pop, God, Mog
c	can, cot, cop, cap, cat, cod
k	kid, kit, Kim, Ken

Phase 2 Set 4 Letters and Words

ck	kick, sock, sack, dock, pick, sick, pack, ticket, pocket
e	get, pet, ten, net, pen, peg, met, men, neck
u	up, mum, run, mug, cup, sun, tuck, mud, sunset
r	rim, rip, ram, rat, rag, rug, rot, rocket, carrot

Phase 2 Set 5 Letters and Words

h	had, him, his, hot, hut, hop, hum, hit, hat, has, hack, hug
b	but, big, back, bet, bad, bag, bed, bud, beg, bug, bun, bus, Ben, bat, bit, bucket, beckon, rabbit
f, ff	of, if, off, fit, fin, fun, fig, fog, puff, huff, cuff, fan, fat
l, ll	lap, let, leg, lot, lit, bell, fill, doll, tell, sell, Bill, Nell, dull, laptop
ss	ass, less, hiss, mass, mess, boss, fuss, hiss, pass, kiss, Tess, fusspot

Click on the below video clip to view Phase 2 sounds

(Note: The school advises that content is viewed and streamed using an Internet connection (Wifi or Hardwired) and that streaming over a mobile network may incur data charges for which the school cannot be liable)

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Phonics - Phase 3

By the time they reach Phase 3, children will already be able to blend and segment words containing the 19 letters taught in Phase 2.

Over the twelve weeks which Phase 3 is expected to last, twenty-five new graphemes are introduced (one at a time).

Set 6: j, v, w, x

Set 7: y, z, zz, qu

Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng

Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

During Phase 3, children will also learn the letter names using an alphabet song, although they will continue to use the sounds when decoding words.

Words that are referred to as Tricky words are also taught: he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my and her. These are not decodable and children have to remember how to read and spell them.

Click on the below video clip to view Phase 3 sounds

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Phonics - Phase 4

Reception Summer Term – Phase 4

When children start Phase Four of the Letters and Sounds phonics programme, they will know a grapheme for each of the 42 phonemes. They will be able to blend phonemes to read CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and segment in order to spell them.

Children will also have begun reading straightforward two-syllable words and simple captions, as well as reading and spelling some tricky words.

In Phase 4, no new graphemes are introduced. The main aim of this phase is to consolidate the children's knowledge and to help them learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and milk, tent, next, lunch and train.

Words that are referred to as Tricky words are also taught: said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out and what.

These are not decodable and children have to remember how to read and spell them.

EYFS Reading

At Grange we are focusing on enthusing a love of reading in our pupils. Each classroom has a recently updated reading area, children visit the school library once a week from where they can borrow a book to take home plus they have a reading book. Four times a week there are guided reading sessions in class, one of which will involve pupils in a small group working with their teacher on a specific reading task whilst the other children enjoy reading for pleasure with independent follow up activities.

Children should be reading every night; even if they can read fluently it is still important to spend time with them talking about their books and new vocabulary they have seen and to check their comprehensions of what is happening in the book. Parents should also sign the yellow reading record book, and comment if possible, daily. Your support with this is very important.

Children are encouraged to read by recording books on a recently introduced ‘Reading Award’ card whereby they gain certificates for reading a certain number of books. They are encouraged to write reviews about the books they have read to display in their classes. Teachers read aloud to children every day from the class novel.

From time to time new books will be introduced, pertaining to a certain theme, to each year group and there are seasonal interactive displays in the library.

Younger pupils visit Ealing Library and at various meetings parents are able to complete Ealing Library membership forms and we process them as part of an outreach programme. Grange is lucky enough to have volunteers who read with children from both our parents and the wider community. If you can spare time to come in and read with children please contact Miss Talbutt via the school office.

Click here to view the recommended reading list for Early Years

You will find a recommended reading list for each group; this is not an exhaustive list and there are many available on the internet, but it is a starting point and you may wish to read other books from the same author. Here are some websites that you may find useful:

National Literacy Trust