Early Years Unit > Curriculum

The Early Years’ Foundation Stage provides the curriculum guidance at this initial stage of the boys’ education.

The school day is organised to provide a range of inside and outside learning opportunities in each of the areas of the Early Years’ Foundation Curriculum. The content of activities is planned to promote the children’s development emotionally, intellectually, socially and physically.

The curriculum is delivered through termly topic themes, which are planned in liaison with the Junior Department

In addition to the Early Years’ Foundation Stage areas of learning, the school week offers a regular cycle of activities.  These include assemblies and library sessions P.E., Music and French which are taught by specialist teachers for the Transition year. A Karate club is also on offer to Transition pupils as an extra-curricular activity on Tuesdays after school and Saturdays


Learning
Homefield School has a handwriting policy and an approved script which is used throughout the school.  It is taught from the Kindergarten and Nursery classes onwards and a copy, showing the form of letters used, is available for parents.

In the Early Years’ Unit we refer to the alphabet letters by their sounds and introduce the letter names later on. Please use this method at home too, as this helps children in the early stages of their reading development. Capital letters should only be used for the initial letter of a name at this stage of learning to write.

The children are taught as a whole class, in mixed ability groups, or individually, according to the teacher’s aims and the children’s needs.

The staff ensure that there is a balance between child-initiated and adult-directed activities and that the curriculum is sufficiently differentiated to meet the needs of individual children at different stages of their development. The importance of interactive and social play as the child’s natural way of making sense of his world is intrinsic to our teaching approach.

To extend learning and to make it a more meaningful experience, the boys are encouraged to bring in books or items of interest related to the topics being studied, (eg objects for the sounds’ table, photos of themselves as a baby).

We welcome parental involvement and invite parents to participate in their children’s learning by making the planning available to parents through our weekly Focus Sheet and a copy on the EYU Noticeboard.  We also encourage parental involvement with their child’s regular reading practice and hold a meeting for parents at the start of the Autumn Term at which we give some tips on how they can best help their children with reading.