Progression in Early Years

Children make exceptional progress throughout their time in Reception Class. The Early Years Curriculum at Gurnard has been carefully planned to scaffold children in their development as they move through the year, and successfully prepare them for Key Stage One. 

Through carefully planned progression mapping, we have ensured that children are able to build on skills as they move through the year, and we are able to offer the children a wide range of experiences and drops of knowledge along the way. 

Gurnard Primary School is uniquely situated a short walk from Gurnard Beach, which allows us the opportunity to use the beach as a tool for delivering parts of our curriculum. At Gurnard we are lucky to have parents who engage well with the school and their child’s learning, so we ensure there are very clear lines of communication about children’s progress and how they can help to support their child at home. 

Gurnard Primary School is fortunate to have copious amounts of outdoor space, and in Early Years we are able to use our own meadow area in addition to our outdoor playground. We are also able to use a large nature area and a forest school area. This enables us to teach lots of our curriculum in a hands-on way, outside in our green spaces which supports our children's mental well-being and highly motivates them to learn. At lunchtime our children enjoy an ‘outdoor play and learning’ programme which creates opportunities for joined up play with children across the whole school, which helps to build the children's sense of belonging. 

Our curriculum is designed around a careful balance of adult-led and child-led learning, to ensure that all children access the learning opportunities provided by our broad curriculum and not just those that are already interested. Our environment is thoughtfully planned and regularly adapted to promote independence, challenge and opportunities to learn and embed new knowledge, skills and vocabulary. 

Within our environment children can master and rehearse new skills and vocabulary, alongside our highly skilled adults in the role of ‘play partners’ who facilitate higher order thinking and support children to develop their growth mindset. Quality play at Gurnard includes; collaboration, reflection, problem solving and evaluating. We allow our children to engage for long periods of time building high levels of concentration. We teach new vocabulary, skills and knowledge through discrete learning opportunities in small groups, giving every child the opportunity to contribute and share ideas.

We ensure children are making progress and are on track to meet the end of year expectations, by using assessment checkpoints at the end of each half term, if children are falling behind with the planned curriculum, we rapidly intervene. A partnership with parents is pivotal in helping children progress, therefore we ensure parents are aware of which areas of learning we are focusing on, and how we are supporting their child. We support them to know what they can do at home to help their child through face to face meetings, our class blog, reading records and messages home.

It is important to us that all children gain an understanding of the world they are growing up in and learn how to live alongside and respect for a diverse range of people. We do this by inviting visitors into the school, reading carefully chosen books and exploring artefacts and photographs. We have high expectations that all children can reach their potential and be ready to begin the Year One curriculum by the time they leave Reception, regardless of their starting knowledge on entry to the school or their background.