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Welcome to
The Early Years Foundation Stage
at Rimon!
At Rimon, we provide a broad and exciting curriculum based on The Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework and ‘Development Matters’ guidance. We offer a balanced approach, by providing motivating adult-led activities and real life experiences and combine this with early year’s best practice. Our practice includes learning through play, enabling environments, outdoor learning, and utilising children’s interest and teaching through interactions. Our provision is developmentally appropriate, and children continuously learn and develop these skills throughout Reception.
In Reception, we implement a language and communication rich environment by reading stories, modelling sentences and allowing opportunities for the children to share personal experiences. We encourage and focus on interactions with children to foster a deeper level of learning, in areas such as stories, songs and rhymes.
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Reading and Writing
In Reception, we ensure that the children have many opportunities to read and be read with
throughout the day. We encourage a love for reading in the children through various initiatives,
such as, having an inviting ‘Reading Corner’, filled with engaging, age-appropriate books and
story props, daily story time sessions, and a weekly ‘Mystery Reader’ (class parent).
In addition, the Rimon Reception Team will read 1-1 with every child at least once a week, focusing
on phonic knowledge, decoding, segmenting and blending of words, fluency and pace of
reading and comprehension.
We follow ‘The Power of Reading’ scheme in Reception, where the aim is to immerse children in high quality texts through role playing and talking. We develop children’s writing through spoken language and comprehension of stories. Children have ongoing opportunities throughout the day in our provision to practice writing and are encouraged to complete one ‘focus’ piece of writing a week.
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Phonics
Phonics teaching is based on the ‘Read Write Inc’ scheme in EYFS and KS1 and are taught both discretely and through our reading and writing curriculum. Phonics is taught systematically with daily sessions four times a week, in groups, so that teaching can be targeted at children’s levels. Children are assessed and re-grouped every 6-8 weeks to ensure progression. Children who need extra help are given individual interventions. Please click here to see our Phonics Policy for more information.
Click here to find out about how we teach phonics and how you can help.
Maths
We follow the ‘White Rose Maths Hub’ scheme in Reception, and continue this throughout the school. We teach Maths through concrete, meaningful real-life experiences and stories. We take care to develop children’s conceptual understanding and provide a language-rich mathematics curriculum.
Kodesh
Kodesh lessons set the foundation for raising the children to have a love for their Jewish learning and a pride in their Jewish identity. The children have a daily Kodesh lesson, which over the week, covers Hebrew reading, Jewish topic, Parasha and general knowledge, which we teach through songs. They learn daily Tefillot (prayers) and benching (grace after meals), focusing on the meaning of the words, gratitude and building their own connection to Hashem.
Hebrew reading is at the core of Reception Kodesh learning. The children learn the names and sounds of the Hebrew alphabet and vowels and how to write the letters correctly. By the end of the year, most children are able to segment and blend 2-syllable Hebrew words. Whilst we do not directly teach Ivrit in Reception, links between Hebrew phonics and Ivrit are made throughout the year; with the children learning some basic Hebrew vocabulary.
Children learn about the Jewish Chagim (festivals) and various Jewish topics including the creation of the world, Brachot, Kashrut and Shabbat. Their learning integrates secular and Kodesh together; for example, they learn about the solar system when learning about creation, and what we use trees for, when learning about the festival of Tu Bishvat. They learn the weekly Parasha with a focus on a weekly Middah (character trait) which links to our PSHE curriculum and building stronger social skills in the early years.
Early Years Principles
at Rimon
Enabling environments
Learning through play, is the best and most meaningful way for young
children to learn, and this is why it is at the forefront of our EYFS teaching
at Rimon. We offer open-ended exploratory experiences for our children.
The structure of our day includes periods of continuous play, so children can
get deeply involved in their learning. Our learning environments are organised
so that high quality, open-ended resources are accessible to the children all
the time. The children can choose what they play and learn with, following
their personal interests, and learn to tidy up after themselves
– ‘choose it, use it, put it away' is our motto!
We encourage children to make their own choices, so their level of
involvement becomes greater and their independent learning deepens.
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Outdoor Learning
We have recently developed our outside area, placing a strong emphasis on the importance of outdoor learning. Outdoor play provides excellent opportunities including experiencing the natural world, learning and exploring pro-actively, as well as experiencing elements of risk and challenge.
Interactions
Much of our teaching is through interactions. Our focus is on questioning, modelling language and vocabulary development. Adults closely observe the children and sensitively join in with their play, to extend their language and thinking, and develop their knowledge and skills. We promote the ‘Characteristics of effective learning’ (‘playing and exploring’, ‘active learning’ and ‘creating and thinking critically’), developing confident, resilient, independent learners throughout Reception. In all we do, we encourage positive attitudes to learning, such as curiosity, concentration and willingness to ‘have a go’.
“Our aim is for the children to leave EYFS as confident, happy, independent, resilient learners, who are emotionally and academically prepared for the transition into KS1 in both their Secular and Kodesh learning. ”
EYFS Leader - Mrs Helva
Click here for additional Parent support.