Welcome to the EYFS Parents Curriculum Meeting at Great Bardfield Primary School

1. Welcome to the EYFS Parents Curriculum Meeting at Great Bardfield Primary School Wednesday 26th September 2018

2. EYFS Curriculum. • Split into 7 areas. • Three Prime Areas • Personal, Social, Emotional Development • Physical Development • Communication and Language • Four Specific Areas • Literacy • Mathematics • Expressive Arts and Design • Understanding the World

10. Characteristics of Effective Learning. • Legal Obligation to Report on this. • Children assessed on how they learn. • Split into 3 Areas • Active Learning- Motivation • Playing and Exploring- Engagement • Creating and Thinking Critically- Thinking

14. Topics • Planned but also follow the children’s interests. • Areas will be enhancedinside and out. • Often planned through stories. • Parents will be informed of the topics but this may change depending on children’s interests. • The day consists of various types of activities. Fine motor skills practise time, number time and maths, chill time ( child initiated learning ), letters and sounds time and reading.

15. Mathematics • Children will be taught... • Number skills – Counting, ordering, writing, recognising numbers up to 20 and beyond. • Calculation – 1 more, 1 less, simple addition/ subtraction, sharing, counting in 2s, 5,s 10s. • Shape space and measures – Simple time, weighing, 2d/ 3d shapes, measuring height/ length, capacity, time and money • Problem Solving – estimating, using and applying above skills.

16. Literacy • Split into Reading and Writing • Phonics is a major part of this.

17. Letters and Sounds Phonics • We follow the letters and sounds phonics scheme of work. • Children are taught as a whole class then in small groups on a daily basis. They are focusing on phonological awareness for the first half term as this is the foundation they need to blend and use sounds they will learn later . This includes learning about syllables, rhyming, on set and rime and phoneme awareness. After half term they will be taught 4 graphemes per weekwhilst continuing with the phonological awareness skills. • Children are grouped according to their existing phonological awareness knowledge. • They all follow a very systematic approach. • They will bring home a letters and sounds card with all the sounds and words they need to practise. Please bring this to school daily.

18. Two types of words.1: • Words that we can sound out(decodable) • Put sound buttons underneath to help sound them out. • Sent home on cards to practise.

19. Tricky Words2: • Words that we can’t sound out • Will be sent home to practise. • Help your child to read them, cut them out and make snap games etc. Rapid recall of these words will really help with reading. The order they are introduced is the order of importance. There are 18 essential words they should learn in year R. Any others is a bonus!

20. What can you do to help? • Practise the sounds at home. • Help your child practise the letter formation in any way you like. • Practice blending sounds together to make words eg s a t sat and segmenting words into their separate sounds for example hot h o t • Learn tricky words.

21. Reading Books • Will be sent home every week. They will be changed on a Monday and Thursday. • Books start with no words and then have some words in. Help your child to follow the text from left to right with their finger and point out letter sounds they know. • Talk about the story and what is happening in the pictures. This is always more interesting than the text at this stage. Enjoyment and story language is the most important thing at this stage. • Write in your child’s Reading Record to let us know how child is getting on or any successes you may have experienced.

22. Writing • Children start writing by making marks on a paper, some of which they can explain. • Once they start to grasp the concept of letters, they will experiment with writing them, usually they will want to write their name first. • Children who have started to segment and blend sounds, will use this to help them with writing, • Emergent writing is the first form of writing. This is such an important stage. Your child will start to hear sounds and write the sounds they hear. Eg for snowman they may write ‘sm’. This is brilliant and all attempts at writing should be valued.

23. Writing • How do you know when children have the maturity and the skills ready for writing? Here are a few tests. • Can they balance on one leg for 8 seconds? • Can they support their own body weight when doing a press up in the proper press up position? • Can they touch finger on their hand in turn with their thumb? • Can they crawl?

24. Writing • Gross Motor Exercises These exercises are for developing upper body strength (shoulders) and core stability: • Spend sustained periods of time lying on the tummy whilst doing various activities • Crawling on fours at different speeds, forwards and backwards pushing a ball in front of them • Kneeling – balance on two knees, walk on two knees, throw and catch a ball whilst on two knees • Throwing – over the head two handed, from the shoulder one handed, shooting a ball through a netball net • Pull – ups at monkey bars • Pushing other children on wheeled toys (uphill and over rough terrain) • Wheelbarrow races • Lifting and carrying heavy items such as buckets filled with soil or water, heavy shopping bags, heavy rocks or stones

26. Tapestry Online Learning Journeys • Photos to build up a record of your child’s experiences at school. May be individual photos or of your child working in a group or with the whole class. There may be weeks when your child has lots of photos and other weeks with not so many. Hosted in the UK on secure servers. You will have secure access via your email that you supplied us with and a unique password. • Add comments and photos of your own.. Please discuss any issues you have directly with me. • You have all signed a consent form to agree to us using your child’s image in other children’s learning journeys and for you to treat all images of other children as for your own personal use only. Nothing can be shared on social networking sites or in public places.

27. Bug Club • Your child will receive a secure log in and password to access an online reading scheme in line with the letters and sounds scheme that we teach phonics through. The first books will only include the sounds they have learnt so the text is limited but the more sounds they learn the more interesting the text becomes. • We will allocate books to your child. • There will be bug questions and awards for your child to earn. • This is intended as an extra way for you to practise phonics and reading with your child. Sit together and share the books. • Please let us know if you experience any problems with logging in etc.

28. EYFS Assessment • Children are assessed formally at the End of The Year Against the 17 Early Learning Goals. • Emerging, Expected, Exceeding. • Most children will be within the very broad expected band. If your child is emerging it may be that they are summer born and not ready to achieve the learning goals (the bands do not take into consideration a child’s age). You will be made aware of any concerns we have before you receive the report. A very small percentage of children will achieve exceeding if they are judged to be working way beyond what is expected for their age. Although these assessments are a legal requirement what is more important to us is your child’s attitude to learning and mind set at school. These are the skills that will help them to be successful in the future. • Throughout the Year children are continually judged against the Early Years Outcomes.

29. Any Questions?