Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) at Lady Boswell’s!

About us

Each of our two Reception classes has 30 pupils. These classes are each led by a Class Teacher and at least one full time teaching assistant. The Acorn Class Teachers are Mrs Natasha Wyatt (Monday and Tuesday) and Mrs Sally Mollison (Wednesday to Friday) and the Teaching Assistants are Mrs Rebecca Hancock and Mrs Amber Saunders.  Chestnut Class is taught by Mrs Sarah O'Prey (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) and Mrs Natasha Wyatt (Wednesday) and the Teaching Assistants are Mrs Sarah Wheeler and Mrs Geraldine Hayden.  We also have many regular parent volunteers as we recognise what a huge impact parental help has in the classroom, as well as the value of having additional adults in the role of supporting and extending the learning of our pupils on a daily basis.

At Lady Boswell’s all members of staff in the EYFS have an equally important role to play in the learning and development of our pupils. With this in mind, we ensure that we hold weekly team meetings, termly one to one supervision meetings with the Designated Safeguarding Leader and provide regular Continuing Professional Development. All staff in the EYFS understand child development, are passionate, enthusiastic and responsive to children’s needs as well as being sensitive and caring and providing the nurture that young children require.

Safeguarding

Children learn best when they are healthy, safe and secure, when their individual needs are met, and when they have positive relationships with the adults caring for them. At Lady Boswell’s we provide a high quality environment, which is welcoming, safe and stimulating, and where children are able to enjoy learning and grow in confidence. We take all necessary steps to keep children safe and well including completing daily risk assessments of the learning environment, holding termly one to one staff supervision meetings and closely monitoring children’s well-being and involvement. (Please see the school Safeguarding Policy in the Policies section of our website)

Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning in Year R are rooted in the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and are carefully structured to provide a coherently sequenced journey across all Areas of Learning, with the Prime Areas underpinning all development. Our practice is guided by the four overarching principles of the EYFS framework—A Unique Child, Positive Relationships, Enabling Environments, and Learning and Development—ensuring that every child is recognised as a capable learner, supported through warm, respectful relationships and high-quality, responsive environments. At Lady Boswell’s, we maintain high expectations for all pupils and use thoughtful planning, skilled interactions, and ongoing observation and assessment to enable strong progress from individual starting points.

A strong emphasis is placed on language and vocabulary, with rich spoken language woven through all aspects of provision to develop confident oracy, communication, collaboration and attentive listening. Early mathematics is taught through a carefully sequenced mastery approach, drawing on the NCETM Mastering Number programme and extended through Power Maths with White Rose progression, supporting secure number sense, subitising, and fluency within and across 10. Teaching is delivered through meaningful, topic-based experiences and is responsive to children’s interests, supporting the development of knowledge that is retained in long-term memory.

Our indoor and outdoor continuous provision is intentionally designed to promote independence, exploration, risk-taking and sustained thinking through purposeful play. The Characteristics of Effective Learning are embedded throughout, alongside the Beautiful Thinking philosophy, encouraging children to reason, reflect, make connections and work collaboratively. We place a strong focus on well-being and involvement, recognising their importance in effective learning, and actively promote our core values of creativity, compassion, communication, confidence, collaboration and curiosity through daily interactions and shared experiences. Children learn best through first-hand experiences, meaningful interactions, physical activity and play, which form the foundation of our approach.

 The Early Years curriculum encompasses three prime areas of learning:

• • Personal, social and emotional
  • Communication and Language
  • Physical

The curriculum breaks down into four further areas of learning:

• • Literacy
  • Mathematics
  • Understanding the world
  • Expressive arts and design

Our teaching and learning is organised through a range of approaches and provides a balance of child-initiated and adult-led activities:

• • Small group teaching of Guided Reading
  • Whole class discreet phonics lessons
  • Handwriting sessions
  • PE/ dance lessons
  • Music lessons
  • Forest School sessions
  • Whole class teaching for short periods of time such as story time, direct teaching (for example of maths or literacy), songs and rhymes, discussions and sharing work.
  • Planned focused activities where adults work with a small group of children at a time and children carry out teacher directed tasks independently. (Teachers will differentiate the activity to meet the needs of every child participating).
  • Opportunities for teachers to work alongside children as they develop their own interests in particular areas of the curriculum in what we call Independent Learning.
• For further details about our EYFS provision, please refer to the EYFS Curriculum page 

 

At Lady Boswell’s we recognise that the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending the children’s development and we view it as the children’s ‘third teacher’. The Foundation Stage classrooms are organised to allow children to explore and learn securely and safely and we have an enclosed outdoor area with two canopies. The classrooms and the outdoor area have defined learning zones, where children are able to find and locate equipment and resources independently. We provide an enriching and stimulating environment both indoors and outside which offers the children a broad range of resources enabling them to apply and extend their learning in all 7 areas of the EYFS curriculum and far beyond. We operate a ‘free flow’ system where the children from our two classes can move between all the learning areas as they choose. We also have a large forest school area which the children use at least once a week. Being outdoors offers the children opportunities for doing things in different ways and on different scales than when indoors. They are able to explore, use their senses, develop their language skills and be physically active. Through observation we assess the children’s interests, stages of development and learning needs before planning additional exciting, engaging and challenging activities and experiences in the environment to enhance and extend the children’s learning.