Our Curriculum

“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.”- EYFS Framework 2021. 

In EYFS we believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life to enable them to achieve their full potential. We know that children quickly develop in the early years and that a child’s experiences between birth and 5 years have a major impact on their future life chances. At Kings Oak Primary Learning Centre we ensure all children access high quality teaching and learning to gain knowledge and develop the skills needed to be successful learners in EYFS and beyond. We ensure that all children make good progress and that they gain a secure foundation by planning for the learning and development of each individual child and continually reviewing the impact of this. 

Our curriculum has been designed by planning carefully thought-out skills and knowledge to meet the needs of the children at Kings Oak in all of the 7 areas of learning. We used the EYFS framework (view framework) and Development Matters (view document) to give us a base for our learning and then considered other knowledge and skills based on research that we know are important for our children to plan an ambitious and exciting curriculum to ensure our pupils are engaged and enjoy learning and therefore make fantastic progress. 

Our curriculum allows children to develop and learn knowledge and skills in the following areas. 

Prime areas: 

• Communication and language 
• Personal, social and emotional development 
• Physical development 

Specific areas: 

• Literacy 
• Mathematics 
• Understanding the World 
• Expressive Art and Design 

We ensure that children are exposed to a good balance of direct teaching and learning through play. In EYFS we use carpet time to deliver direct teaching sessions for all areas of learning. We use assessments and our knowledge of the children to plan continuous provision and enhancements which will support the children to learn and develop in all 7 areas of learning. We analyse our assessments regularly to identify areas of learning that the children need more support with and then saturate the environment with opportunities for the children to develop these skills both through direct teaching within the environment from an adult and independently through play. Our environment is key to children’s development. Adults model how to use the areas effectively and use sustained shared thinking to extend children’s learning and thinking.  

Literacy and Communication and Language 

Literacy and communication and language are at the heart of our curriculum. We value these key skills as without them, children would not be able to access other areas of the curriculum. 

Phonics is key to teaching children to read quickly during EYFS. In F1 children begin the year by learning and developing phase 1 phonics skills. When they are secure with phase 1 aspects they then begin to learn the graphemes within their name using the Read Write Inc scheme. This then continues into FS2 where children are taught to recognise more graphemes including digraphs and trigraphs and they are taught to segment and blend these graphemes to read words and then sentences. Children quickly progress through the Read Write Inc scheme during their time in EYFS at Kings Oak Primary Learning Centre.  

As well as phonics, we also know how important it is to expose children to high-quality story books. Each week we focus on a core story in both FS1 and FS2. The core stories are carefully chosen to ensure that they support the development of language and vocabulary as well as being engaging and exciting stories to promote a love of reading. These stories are used in teaching and read repetitively so that children have memorable knowledge of quality stories. Although these stories are core to our curriculum, children are also immersed in a wider range of books and stories through, daily stories, weekly parent reading mornings, character visits and dress-up day. 

At Kings Oak, it is very important to us that children make rapid progress with communication and language and so it is embedded within everything that we do. We have implemented lots of extra opportunities throughout the day for children to practise using the skills that are taught. This includes at snack time, during the daily time to talk sessions, during Talk for writing sessions and using the Poetry basket to learn to recite poems. 

Mathematics 

At Kings Oak Primary Learning Centre, we want all children to love maths and be confident mathematicians. Our maths curriculum is centred in having high expectations for every child whilst aiming to ensure that children have the opportunity to develop a secure grounding in number sense giving them the confidence and belief to tackle problems.  

Children learn and develop mathematical concepts throughout the whole day. Direct teaching sessions are led by the teacher to teach children concepts using the Master the Curriculum scheme. Children then participate in carefully planned activities and enhancements are added to the environment for children to practise and extend the skills they have learnt. Maths concepts are also taught through a “Maths meeting” where daily routines such as self-registration, day and date and numbers of days spent at school are explored.  

Mathematical reasoning and talk are encouraged across the school. Children are encouraged and supported by adults to reason and problem solve. Stem sentences are used to support mathematical discussions. 

Please see our long-term plans for more details about our bespoke curriculum.

Foundation Stage 1 Overview

Foundation Stage 2 Overview