At Wickham Common we are proud to provide a strong foundation for a child’s school career through our EYFS curriculum, provision and a broad range of experiences. With carefully planned out classrooms and a spacious outdoor learning area, children are provided with opportunities to develop their skills and confidence in the seven areas of learning. Our highly skilled and passionate staff use their knowledge and understanding of the EYFS curriculum to nurture our children’s talents and personal development. 

Intent 

Our broad and balanced curriculum is enriched with relevant experiences and is carefully crafted with the aim of enabling children to grow as individuals, develop their knowledge and skills and become respectful, resilient and resourceful people. 

We use Development Matters as a base for our curriculum, alongside other resources and schemes, as well as our curriculum drivers. Our curriculum aims to develop children’s knowledge and skills and embed what they have learnt, providing them with a strong foundation for when they move into Year 1. Through carefully planned lessons, activities and provision, we encourage children to follow their own interests and curiosity. Modelling taking risks and ‘having a go’ along the way, aims to further nurture our children’s positive behaviour for learning.  

Wellbeing and character development is at the heart of what we do and is fostered through a highly inclusive environment, all pupils are taught to try their best and strive to reach their full potential. We provide a variety of enrichment opportunities to support pupil wellbeing so that they feel safe, happy and ready to learn. 

We love reading and strive to nurture this in our children by providing opportunities to share texts during whole class teaching, continuous provision and story time.  We aim to develop children’s comprehension skills from the very beginning as they expand their knowledge of stories and non-fiction texts. We use the Read Write Inc scheme for teaching Phonics and provide targeted support to help any children that need help to keep up with the Phonics teaching.  

Implementation 

We ensure coverage of the curriculum through progressive planning with constant review to ensure it has the most value for our children.  We include opportunities for children to practise what they have learnt through independent activities and to embed knowledge by revisiting knowledge and skills regularly over the year.   

Every opportunity throughout the day is used to develop communication skills and build the children’s bank of vocabulary. Within this, the children use their communication skills to form relationships with adults and peers alike.  

Our staff use pedagogical approaches and are confident in using immediate formative assessment within each session to avoid misconceptions and to ensure that all children keep up with the curriculum. Beyond this we then identify children who need extra support whether that be extra practice or adopting a different teaching strategy when needed.  Targeted and open-ended questioning is used to ensure that challenge is given where needed too to ensure children get the most out of every learning opportunity.  At Wickham Common our children are encouraged to be independent learners who are resourceful in supporting themselves with resources on offer and have strategies to be resilient when working. We model the importance of being respectful  of each other, both when learning and playing, reinforcing a happy and safe environment for our children.  

Impact 

At Wickham Common, standards and achievements are consistently high in Reception and Good Level of Development (GLD) results are well above the national average.  Staff help the children to develop their ability to be resourceful, resilient and respectful individuals who are independent, hardworking and fully prepared for Year 1. Our Read Write Inc scheme is implemented consistently and successfully so that our children have a strong foundation for reading as they move through the school.  

We successfully use a wide range of strategies to enable children to achieve their full potential.  Our team includes enough adults to enable us to support children’s learning and wellbeing according to their needs. Regular formative assessment helps us to address gaps in learning or challenge pupils further where appropriate.   

Wickham Common provides a safe and happy environment for our children which is evident in our children’s behaviour for learning, relationships and achievements.