Early Years Foundation Stage Intent  

The Early Years Foundation Stage team at Doxey Academy value the importance of providing high quality education and care, which is centred around the individual needs and interests of our children. Through active learning experiences, stimulating and creative environments and committed and passionate staff; we aim to support and challenge the development of every child in our settings. Our wish is for all our children to develop the knowledge, understanding, skills and the positive attitudes for successful learning throughout the school and build a firm foundation towards a life-long love of learning.   

We carefully structure our day to balance adult-led learning, with child-led sessions. We ensure both approaches foster the characteristics of effective learning and promote deep level learning. High quality resources are linked to books, learning intentions and progressive skills whilst also providing open ended experiences so that children can follow their own imagination or lines of enquiry, which are challenged and supported by a skilled practitioner. Our story book curriculum, immerses our youngest children in stories, with a focus on developing oracy and a love of storytelling and reading from an early age.  

Our curriculum has been designed to acknowledge that all children learn at different rates and each child’s development is unique. We have a strong emphasis on the Prime Areas of Learning, especially Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Communication and Language. We begin to break down barriers both socially and academically to ensure that our children develop into happy, curious and independent learners, who leave the EYFS at Doxey Academy with the skills, knowledge and confidence to flourish and achieve on their next step in their journey into Key Stage One and beyond.  

Curriculum

Our curriculum follows the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early years Foundation Stage. We use Development Matters to support the curriculum and for each area of learning.

The Early Years Foundation Stage covers seven areas of learning. They are:

The Prime Areas

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

The Specific Areas

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

We follow the characteristics of effective teaching and learning and give opportunities to play and explore, be active and think critically and creatively. Combined with providing a knowledge and language rich curriculum, we ensure the children are always building on their existing knowledge and skills, ensuring this is progressive with staff following our progression of knowledge and skills documents.

Children have access to both indoors and outdoors and are able to make choices about where they learn best. As part of our outdoor curriculum the children in Doxey Discoverers and Reception take part in ‘Wellie Wednesday,’ where they take full advantage of our large forest school area. The children enjoy exploring and learning outside through various activities such as; minibeast hunts, tree identification, listening to environmental sounds and making observations.

When all of these areas are incorporated together in a stimulating learning environment it enables the children to develop the key skills and positive attitudes for successful learning throughout the school.

Parents are regularly updated on their child’s learning and progress through class Dojo which allows parent feedback and contributions, and through regular interactions with staff.

Story Book Curriculum

At Doxey Academy our Story Book Curriculum is designed to develop and expand the children’s vocabulary and storytelling skills. It focuses on a high quality, age appropriate text every week. Our booklists contain a carefully curated selection of books to support the teaching of the Development Matters for all areas of the EYFS Curriculum. We feel that it is important that we immerse our children in the magic, awe and wonder that stories can create. Our book led curriculum helps to make reading a true focus point of the children’s learning, helping the children fall in love with books and reading from a very early age. The books have been chosen to inspire, engage and motivate our children to make links in knowledge and skills across the curriculum. The well-designed book led curriculum will inspire our children to ask questions and learn new knowledge, skills, and vocabulary. It will stimulate curiosity and spark imagination, help to develop the children’s background knowledge and cultural capital and encourage discussion.

The books we have chosen will engage and deepen understanding across many aspects of a curriculum. To support the teaching of the Story Book Curriculum, we also use the Tales Toolkit , which introduces the children to the main parts of a story including; the characters, setting, problem and solution using icons. This begins to outline the foundations which enable the children to retell stories, act them out and create their own. 

*Termly overview of the stories and rhymes we cover is a guide, themes might change due to children’s interests, assessment of learning and developmental needs of the cohort.

Please see the curriculum overviews below: