admin@sheriffhutton.n-yorks.sch.uk | tel. 01347 878441
At Sheriff Hutton Primary School, we believe that every child deserves the very best start to their education. Our Reception provision provides a safe, nurturing and stimulating environment where children are encouraged to become confident, independent and enthusiastic learners.
Our approach is based on the updated Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Statutory Framework, we also use Development Matters as non-statutory guidance to support our curriculum planning and professional practice.
We recognise that every child is unique. Children arrive in Reception with different experiences, interests, strengths and starting points. Our role is to build on what each child already knows, identify what they need to learn next and provide the right experiences, interactions and support to help them flourish.
Our Reception curriculum is designed to give children strong foundations for lifelong learning.
Our Reception provision benefits from our close and well-established relationship with the nursery provision based in the classroom next door. The nursery and Reception work as part of a cohesive Early Years phase, providing children with continuity, consistency and a strong sense of belonging as they move through their early education.
The nursery provision is overseen by our EYFS Leader, who provides strategic oversight across both settings. This ensures that expectations, routines, approaches to learning, safeguarding and the development of children’s knowledge and skills are closely aligned.
Our close proximity allows nursery and Reception staff to:
Where children join us directly into Reception, we also work closely with families and previous early years settings to understand their experiences and starting points.
This close relationship means that nursery and Reception are not separate experiences, but form part of a coherent Early Years journey. Children are supported to develop the confidence, independence, communication, early literacy, mathematical understanding and social skills they need to flourish as they move through Reception and into Key Stage 1.
At the heart of our EYFS provision is the unique child.
We take time to get to know every child as an individual – their interests, personality, experiences, strengths and areas for development. We use this knowledge to shape our curriculum and provision rather than expecting every child to learn in exactly the same way.
We believe children learn best when they:
Our provision is inclusive and ambitious. We make appropriate adaptations and provide additional support where children need it, including for children with SEND or other barriers to learning.
Our curriculum covers the seven areas of learning and development within the EYFS.
The three prime areas are:
These provide the foundations for the four specific areas:
The prime areas are particularly important because they underpin children’s ability to learn and develop successfully across the whole curriculum.
We provide a balance of adult-led teaching and purposeful child-initiated learning. Children learn through carefully planned experiences, high-quality interactions, stories, practical activities, exploration, play and discussion.
We want children to become effective and independent learners.
Our teaching supports children to develop the characteristics of effective learning:
Playing and Exploring
Children have opportunities to investigate, explore, make choices and develop their own ideas.
Active Learning
Children are encouraged to concentrate, persevere and keep trying when something is challenging.
Creating and Thinking Critically
Children are encouraged to make connections, solve problems, develop their own ideas and explain their thinking.
Adults carefully observe children’s learning and use these observations to decide when to join in, model, question, scaffold or extend children’s thinking.
We understand that effective Early Years teaching is not about filling children’s time with activities. It is about creating rich experiences and using skilled adult interaction to help children develop their knowledge, vocabulary, independence and understanding.
Communication and language are at the heart of our curriculum.
We provide children with rich opportunities to listen, talk, discuss, question and explain. Adults model ambitious vocabulary and support children to develop increasingly complex language.
We use high-quality stories, rhymes, songs, conversations and real-life experiences to develop children’s vocabulary and understanding.
Children are encouraged to:
The updated EYFS continues to place a strong emphasis on communication and language as a foundation for children’s wider learning.
We want every child to become a confident, fluent and enthusiastic reader.
We teach phonics using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, a systematic synthetic phonics programme. Phonics teaching begins early in Reception and follows a carefully sequenced progression, although the children are introduced to some aspects in the nursery provision.
Children learn to:
Children practise reading using books that are carefully matched to the phonics they have been taught, ensuring that they experience success and develop confidence.
The EYFS Word Reading Early Learning Goal focuses on children applying their phonic knowledge to read words and simple sentences, including appropriate common exception words.
Phonics is only one part of becoming a reader.
We also place a strong emphasis on reading for pleasure. Adults read aloud to children every day, sharing a wide range of high-quality stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction.
Our reading environment encourages children to choose and talk about books and to develop a love of stories and reading.
Click on the following link to access further information about Little Wandle. Parents Resources
We recognise that successful writing begins long before children are expected to write sentences.
Children develop the physical and language foundations for writing through:
Children are given opportunities to write as part of their play and across the curriculum, alongside explicit teaching of early writing skills.
The DfE’s Writing Framework provides further guidance for us on developing early writing and supports the expectations of the EYFS and the transition into the National Curriculum.
We develop children’s mathematical understanding through a combination of direct teaching, practical experiences, stories, games and purposeful play.
Children develop secure foundations in:
We encourage children to talk about their mathematical thinking, use appropriate vocabulary and explain how they know something.
Practical resources and visual representations help children develop conceptual understanding before moving towards more abstract mathematical thinking.
Our Early Years children benefit from being part of a small village primary school in North Yorkshire.
Our school grounds and local environment provide rich opportunities for children to explore:
Children are encouraged to observe carefully, ask questions and develop an understanding of the world around them.
We want our children to develop a sense of belonging to their local community while also beginning to understand that there are many different people, places and cultures beyond their immediate experience.
Physical development is an essential part of our provision.
Children have regular opportunities to develop their gross and fine motor skills through indoor and outdoor provision, physical activity, construction, writing, creative activities and practical tasks.
We also explicitly develop children’s independence and self-care skills, including:
These skills help children become increasingly confident and ready for the demands of Key Stage 1.
Children’s safety and wellbeing are central to everything we do.
Our Early Years environment is carefully organised to provide appropriate levels of challenge while maintaining children’s safety. Staff follow the school’s safeguarding procedures and work closely with families and other professionals where appropriate.
The EYFS framework includes strengthened and explicit welfare and safeguarding requirements, including clear requirements around safer sleep and other aspects of children’s welfare.
We help children develop the language and confidence to:
Safeguarding is not taught as a single topic; it is woven through everyday routines, relationships, stories, discussions and experiences.
We are committed to ensuring that every child can participate, belong and succeed.
Our Early Years provision is adapted to meet individual children’s needs. This may include changes to the learning environment, additional adult support, visual resources, sensory opportunities, carefully planned routines, targeted teaching or specialist advice.
We work closely with parents and carers, our SENCo and external professionals where appropriate to ensure that children receive the support they need.
We recognise that equity sometimes means providing different support to enable children to achieve the same opportunity to learn and participate.
A key purpose of our Reception year is to establish the strong foundations children need for Year 1 and beyond.
School readiness is not simply about children being able to complete a particular list of academic tasks. We want children to be ready to:
Our Early Years leader works closely with colleagues in Key Stage 1 to ensure that there is a clear and well-understood progression from Reception into Year 1.
Assessment in Early Years is primarily about knowing children well and identifying what they need to learn next.
Adults observe children during play, teaching and everyday interactions and use this information to adapt provision and teaching.
We do not want assessment to become a burden for staff or take children away from valuable learning experiences. Instead, assessment is integrated into everyday practice.
At the end of Reception, teachers complete the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP). This provides an assessment of children’s development against the Early Learning Goals and supports transition into Year 1.
We recognise that parents and carers are children’s first and most important educators.
We aim to develop strong relationships with families from the beginning. We share information about children’s learning and provide practical suggestions to help parents support learning at home.
We encourage parents to:
We provide information about phonics, reading, mathematics and other areas of learning so that families understand what children are learning and how they can help.
By the end of Early Years, we want every child to be happy, confident, curious and increasingly independent, with secure foundations for the next stage of their education.
Most importantly, we want children to leave Reception thinking:
“I can do it. I can learn. I can ask questions. I can keep trying. I belong here.”
Our provision combines the statutory requirements of the EYFS with high-quality teaching, purposeful play, rich experiences, skilled adult interaction and carefully sequenced early reading, writing and mathematics.
Our aim is not simply to prepare children for Year 1. It is to give them the strongest possible foundations for a lifetime of learning.
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