Bramfield C of E School

Oak Class is our Early Years Foundation Stage Reception Class.

Children in Oak Class are aged 4-5 years old. 

Teachers: Mrs Josephine Shepherd and Mrs Jayne Teager

Supported by: Mrs Kelly and Mrs Higgins

Curriculum Intent

At Bramfield we aim to provide every child with a safe, stimulating and happy learning environment. We build on what children know and are interested in, weaving in a broad range of meaningful experiences whilst carefully scaffolding learning in all areas of the EYFS curriculum. We promote exploration and challenge, ensuring our children develop into confident and independent learners. We value our parents as partners in their children’s learning and strive to work together to ensure the best outcomes for all our children.

Curriculum Implementation

The EYFS curriculum is first and foremost the EYFS Statutory framework. The Framework sets out the Characteristics of Effective Learning (How children learn) and the 7 Areas of Learning (What children learn.) Practitioners also use Development Matters and Birth to 5 Matters to inform planning and assessment.

Characteristics of Effective Learning

The characteristics of effective learning, how we learn, underpins the Early Years Foundation Stage across our association. The ways in which children engage with others and their environment – playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically – support the children to remain effective and motivated learners.

Playing and exploring - finding out and exploring, playing with what they know and being willing to ‘have a go’.

Active Learning - being involved and concentrating, persevering and enjoying achieving what they set out to do.

Creating and thinking critically - having their own ideas, making links and choosing ways to do things.

To help children understand and develop effective learning behaviours, practitioners refer to these charactersistics regularly during our 'time to talk' sessions, where children are encouraged to discuss the activities they have been involved in during the day and reflect upon their own learning. 

In Reception your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development, as set out by the EYFS Framework.

The three prime areas are:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Language and Communication
• Physical Development

These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning and will help them to develop skills in the four specific areas which are:

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding of the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

We have a focus on phonics throughout the school using the newly revised 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds' and our maths is taught using the 'Maths Mastery' approach. Parent guides to both phonics and maths in Reception can be found at the botom of this page. 

Other regular learning includes weekly teaching of RE, PE and music with our music specialist Mrs Newton.  The children also have the experience of cooking activities and using the whole school grounds for physical activities. 

Each half term, EYFS staff introduce a new topic theme to provide inspiration for learning, whilst providing the flexibility for children to follow their own interests and ideas. Children learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. The timetable is carefully structured so that children have directed teaching during the day. The timetable changes throughout the year to take into consideration the changing needs of the children. These sessions are followed by small focused group work. This means the teacher can systematically check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning. Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in independent learning throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms and equal importance is given to learning in both areas.

Each child in the EYFS has a ‘Learning Journey’ file, which is a record of experiences and learning presented through photographs and observations made of your child at school. All staff working with your child will add to the file and use it to identify the next steps in your child’s learning. At Bramfield, we use an online version of the file, called ‘Tapestry’, which allows parents to access their child’s file from home, and add to it with their own comments and photographs etc. At the end of the year, parents are given their child’s learning journey as a PDF file to keep, share and treasure.

Adults use observational assessment effectively to be responsive to the children's needs and interests ensuring all children make progress from their starting points. Our environments are created to reflect and respond to children's predictable and specific needs and interests. To facilitate this further, each week we select a ‘focus child’. Parents of the child are encouraged to share photos of their child engaged in activities which they enjoy. At the beginning of the week, the children share their photos with the rest of the class and these act as a springboard for ideas of activities the children would like to explore further.