Early Years

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) applies to children from birth to the end of the Reception year. Within the Early Years we help children to learn through play and exploration. The EYFS seeks to provide quality and consistency so that every child makes good progress and no child gets left behind. At Masefield, we seek to provide a secure foundation through learning and development opportunities which are planned around the needs and interests of each child and are assessed and reviewed regularly. We believe that all of our pupils have potential and we strive to give them the necessary foundations to enable them to succeed in the rest of the schooling and future prospects. We do this by ensuring partnership working between parents and practitioners and where necessary adopting a multi-agency approach. Our school provides equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring every child is included and supported. We are passionate about developing respectful children who will become successful future citizens that contribute positively to a society in which all members are equally valued.

Learning within the EYFS at Masefield

Our EYFS unit is devoted to providing young children with the ability to develop, consolidate and deepen their current knowledge, understanding and skills across all the areas of learning within the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. It builds on what children know and can do, towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for their future learning.  Each and every pupil has access to a rich, broad and balanced curriculum that is differentiated to ensure that all individual needs are met. Children within our Nursery have a mix of child-initiated and adult-led learning through continuous provision and small group activities. In Reception, the children are offered a higher number of adult-led experiences (which increases throughout the year) in order to ensure the children are school ready. We feel it is important to offer new ideas and thoughts to our children, which they may not have been exposed to before.The Early Years curriculum has regard to supporting individuals in terms of ability, gifts, talents and any additional needs they may have. The EYFS curriculum provides no limits or barriers to the children’s achievements, regardless of their backgrounds, circumstances or needs. The high ambition it embodies is shared by all staff. We provide an enriching and exciting curriculum that offers challenge to all pupils, including those with SEND and our disadvantaged pupils.  We have designed a curriculum which is used to enhance pupil experiences and give opportunities that pupils may not have access to outside of school. Some of these experiences include: attending a traditional birthday party, visiting a park and visiting a farm. These fundamental experiences give children the necessary foundations for the rest of their schooling.

Our curriculum overview can be found here:

EYFS Curriculum Overview

You can find detailed knowledge for each EYFS subject area in the subject tab and the curriculum document e.g Geography Curriculum

At Masefield we believe that working in partnership with our parents is key to the success of our pupils. That is why throughout a child’s time in EYFS parents are regularly invited into school to take part in not only reviews of their child’s learning but also to take part in learning activities with their child through our successful stay and play sessions. We also provide a wealth or resources and support for parents so that they are able to support your child at home, this includes parent workshops and also take home activity bags. You will find a wealth of resources for all ages through our parent guide section of Learning and Development. Below you will find some key EYFS resources to support learning at home.

Each unit has knowledge organiers (pupil and parent versions) to support learning. Here is an example below:

EYFS Pupil Knowledge Organiser

EYFS Parent Knowledge Organiser

At Masefield, we have 'Development Milestones' to support our assessment of pupils.

Below you can view each sheet. In order to help your child progress to the next age milestone there are some ideas below of how you can help at home. We will be working on these in school with your child too.

Also included is our 'Number Bonds Booklet' to support pupils mastery of number.

For additional support, please contact a member of staff or view the links below: