Boynton Primary School

Welcome to EYFS!

“Play is a child’s work and the means whereby they grow and develop.”

We have had a lovely first few days with your children and are very much looking forward to watching them grow, develop and learn! They all seem very enthusiastic and happy and we hope that this continues throughout their first weeks at school. 

The children will have a PE lesson every Wednesday afternoon. Please ensure they have their PE Kits (black or blue shorts / leggings / joggers, white or school logo t-shirt and hoodie / jumper) on this day. They can wear their trainers all day in school, rather than black PE pumps, if you would prefer. 

Please ensure that the children have appropriate clothing for playing and learning outdoors with them each day. 

Below is an outline of the work we intend to carry out over the next half term however the interests of the children will also determine our planning and provision. 

Our Planning will also be further enhanced, or amended, to reflect and include the children’s individual interests. 

Personal, Social and Emotional Development 

The initial focus of our PSED work is to settle the children in to school and to ensure they feel happy, secure and confident within the  setting and our wider school environment. They will be encouraged to explore their new classroom and will be given many opportunities to play and learn together, being encouraged to form new friendships or further develop existing ones. They will also be encouraged to form relationships with the adults they encounter in their classroom environment. The children will be enabled to participate in a wider range of tasks and activities and to become self-motivated and enthusiastic learners. They will be introduced to the routines in our classroom and will be encouraged to learn and follow them, becoming more independent in the process. 

 Using a variety of stories and texts, including ‘The Colour Monster,’ ‘Starting School,’ ‘Peace at Last,’ and ‘Home,’ the children will think, and talk about, themselves, their families, their friends, their feelings and emotions and what makes them special and unique. 

Our Learning Objectives for the children in their Personal, Social and Emotional Development work during Autumn 1 are: 

• To recognise, and demonstrate, friendly behaviour 
• To begin to understand how to be a good friend 
• To begin to join in with small group and whole group activities  
• To be able to choose an activity independently  
• To be able to choose the resources they need for the chosen activities 
• To begin taking turns with their friends 

Communication and Language 

     The children’s Speaking, Listening and Understanding skills will be developed through a range of activities and experiences. They will have the opportunity to talk and to participate in conversations and discussions (in a one-to-one, small group or whole class context), expressing their thoughts, knowledge, ideas and opinions, using vocabulary drawn from their learning, experiences and stories they have listened to. Topic-linked Vocabulary will be introduced to the children and they will be encouraged to use it in the context of their work and speech too.  

The children will also be encouraged to listen carefully to adults and other children and to respond appropriately to them, following simple and more complex instructions. They will also listen to a range of stories, songs and rhymes and will be encouraged to join in with songs and rhymes and to answer questions about the stories they have listened to. 

Our Learning Objectives for the children in their Communication and Language work during Autumn 1 are: 

• To be able to talk about themselves and others 
• To join in with singing songs and rhymes in our class 
• To be able to speak about a story they have listened to  
• To begin to make comments about their observations / work, using any new ‘Topic’ vocabulary in their speech 

Physical Development 

During their PE lessons the children will participate in lessons with Mrs Sunter, Miss Davis and Miss Usher who will be encouraging them to develop their Gross Motor Skills through a range of fundamental games and skills. In addition the children will participate in dance sessions on Monday morning from the 6th October with Dance Danielle! 

The children will also have the opportunity to develop their Gross Motor Skills whilst using the scooters, trikes, Obstacle Course and large outdoor equipment. Within the Areas of Provision in the classroom, the children will be provided with opportunities to develop their Fine Motor Skills through the use of malleable materials (clay, play-dough and salt dough), cutting (with scissors) and sewing. They will also be encouraged to develop an effective pencil grip to enable them to mark-make and write comfortably and effectively and to begin to form the letters in their names correctly. 

Our Learning Objectives for the children in their Physical Development work during Autumn 1 are: 

• To begin to use a dominant hand when drawing and writing 
• To begin to form recognisable letters relating to their name 
• To begin to use anticlockwise movement and retrace vertical lines  
• To begin to use the climbing equipment safely 
• To begin to negotiate space effectively, avoiding others as they move around 
• To use scissors effectively, making snips in paper 

Literacy 

Both the nursery and reception children will begin to participate in Phonics sessions and activities on a daily basis following the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. The nursery children in Autumn 1 will focus on Foundations for Phonics and Phase One, emphasizing language development and environmental sounds and the reception children will be learning Phase 2 and gradually introducing Phase 3 GPCs (Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences) and early word blending.

In class, the children will read, discuss and share a wide variety of books relating to our themes of work, our provocations and the children’s interests. The children will also look at Non-Fiction books and will investigate how we use books to ‘find things out.’ The children will have the opportunity to vote for a ‘Story of the Day’ book, enabling them to make choices about the stories they hear being read to them in our daily Story Time. 

 The children will be given opportunities to draw, write and mark-make in a wide variety of contexts and to talk about the drawing and writing they have created. They will be encouraged to develop a correct pencil grip to enable them to draw and write comfortably and effectively. Using their emerging phonic knowledge and skills, the children will be supported to identify and write the letter sounds they can hear and identify within words in order to transform their thoughts and speech into writing. 

Our Learning Objectives for the children in their Literacy work during Autumn 1 are: 

• To listen to, and enjoy, sharing a range of books 
• To be able to hold a book correctly, to handle it with care, turning its pages from front to back and to be able to recognise the front and back covers 
• To begin to know that print carries meaning and, in English, is read from left to right and from top to bottom 
• To know the difference between text and illustrations  
• To be able to listen to a story recall some facts about it 
• To be able to sequence events in a familiar story 
• To begin to listen to, and identify, sounds in the environment 
• To begin to hear the initial sound in familiar words 
• To begin to be able to identify some letters on a sound mat 

Mathematics 

The children will be introduced to numbers, gradually, following the White Rose Maths and NCETM schemes in their Maths work. We will use ‘NumberBlocks’ and ‘Numicon’ as some of our teaching resources to enhance the children’s understanding of number too. Our initial number work will focus on numbers which are important and significant to the children (1 – 5) and the children will then focus more on numbers 1, 2 and 3, as set out in our Scheme of Work. The children will learn how to represent these numbers in a variety of ways, will compare 1, 2 and 3 and will explore the composition of 1, 2 and 3. They will also think about its place on a number line and will encouraged to ‘subitise’ numbers to 3, meaning they will be able to recognise a quantity without counting it. The children will have many opportunities to count objects, actions and pictures, learning how to count out from a large group of objects accurately and stopping when they have the correct amount. As part of our ‘Self-Registration’ system the children will use ‘Ten Frames’ to count how many children are in our classroom each day and will be exposed to larger numbers as we count our ‘People Pegs’ which we will use when we ‘vote’ for our Daily Story Book. The children will also be exposed to mathematical language, beginning to use, and understand, the terms, ‘more’ or ‘less’ / ‘fewer’ as they count and use number resources. They will also begin to write the numerals 1 – 5.  

The children will use 2D shapes to make a picture of an object of their own choosing and will be encouraged to name some 2D shapes and talk about their properties, which will link to their Number work (eg, a circle has 1 side, a triangle has 3 sides, a square has 4 sides etc). They will also have the opportunity to sort objects by colour, size, shape, number etc and to talk about their work using appropriate mathematical language.  

In addition, the children will be exposed to, and encouraged to use, mathematical language in their everyday work and play. Adult interactions and modelling will support them in these situations and individual children’s mathematical abilities will be encouraged and enhanced through personalised learning and interactions taking place in the Areas of Provision.    

Our Learning Objectives for the children in their Mathematics work during Autumn 1 are: 

• To count up to 5 objects with 1:1 correspondence  
• To match quantities to a given, said number 
• To begin to recognise numbers automatically on a dice / card to 5 
• To begin to find the total of 2 groups of objects to 3, knowing this is called Addition 
• To order numbers to 5 
• To identify some 2D shapes and begin to talk about their properties 
• To say the number names to 10 in order 
• To begin to write some numbers to 5 

Understanding The World 

The children will learn about themselves during our work on ‘What Makes Me A Me?’ They will think about their bodies and will use their senses to explore the world around them. They will also be encouraged to name the different parts of their bodies. They will also talk about their families and what makes them, and their families, special.  

The children will also think about Autumn and will explore the school grounds, looking for signs of change during the season. They will be encouraged to talk about their observations and think about some of the changes that have occurred. The children will also listen to stories about Autumn and how this affects some animals and the world around them. They will learn about Hibernation and will explore which animals hibernate during the winter, and why. 

The children will be encouraged to use the ICT equipment in the classroom, accessing programs on the Smartboard and appropriate Apps on the iPads. 

Our Learning Objectives for the children in their Understanding The World during Autumn 1 are: 

To be able to talk about their families and people who are important to them 

To know the names of the different parts of their bodies 

• To be able to talk about the changes they observe in their environment, particularly Autumn 
• To be aware that some animals are nocturnal and what this means 
• To be aware that some animals hibernate in Winter and name some of them 

Expressive Arts and Design 

In class, the children will have the opportunity to participate in a range of art activities to develop their skills and knowledge. They will also have the opportunity to draw, and paint, a picture of themselves, to create a picture of their face using natural, ‘Loose Parts’ materials and to paint a self portrait The children will be encouraged to explore and use a wide range of art materials in their work and play, enabling them to begin to have preferences for their favourite media to work with. 

The children will also be given opportunities to play together imaginatively, sharing their thoughts and ideas with each other. They will be encouraged to work collaboratively and to use resources effectively and appropriately to enhance their play.  

 The children will be encouraged to join in when we sing together, singing favourite songs they may already know and learning new ones too. They will learn to sing, and then perform, a Harvest song in our Harvest Festival service. They will also have the opportunity to play a range of musical and percussion instruments, exploring the ways they can change the sounds they are able to make with them. 

Our Learning Objectives for the children in their Expressive Arts and Design work during Autumn 1 are: 

• To join in with singing songs and rhymes in our class and to learn the words to some new songs  
• To give meaning to the marks that they make 
• To use simple tools and techniques competently and appropriately 
• To construct with a range of different toys and resources with a purpose and to begin to evaluate their design and creations 
• To experiment with creating different things and to be able to talk about their uses 
• To begin to explore the Art Styles of a famous Artist, eg Picasso