We would like to welcome you to the Early Years at RVIS. We pride ourselves on being approachable, kind, caring and outstanding practitioners who want the best for all of the learners in our care. Most importantly, we believe that happy and well-motivated children are good learners. The Foundation Stage is a safe, secure and friendly environment for our youngest children to gain confidence and independence, in preparation for the next stage of their schooling.

Early Years at RVIS are aged 3 – 5.

At RVIS, we provide a broad, balanced and engaging curriculum for our youngest children, aged 3 to 5 years, based on the British Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Children learn skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development

The 3 Prime Areas are a focus initially and these are:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development – We work alongside parents to develop all of the skills children need, such as self- regulation, so the children are ready to learn.

Physical Development – Through specialist PE lessons and use of the equipment outside, we develop gross motor skills. To develop little hands ready for writing, we use lots of approaches such as ‘funky fingers’ and other planned experiences to enable children to develop control and balance.

Communication and Language Development –Through stories, rhymes and planned experiences, we aim to consistently provide new speaking opportunities for all of the leaners in our care.

The Prime areas will help to develop skills in 4 Specific Areas:

• Literacy Development
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

As active learners, our children acquire skills and knowledge in many different ways. We believe that for learning to be effective, it is not ‘what’ children learn that matters, but rather ‘how’ they learn, and this ‘how’ is what practitioners consider when planning learning environments and experiences for children.

The Characteristics of Effective Learning describe how children learn in the Foundation Stage and can be divided into 3 groups:

Playing and Exploring – Finding out and exploring, being willing to ‘have a go’ and playing with what they know.

Active Learning – being involved and concentrating, trying and persevering, taking pleasure from achieving what they set out to do.

Creating and Thinking Critically – having their own ideas, making links, choosing ways to do things.

Every child is unique, and we know will develop at different rates. Our approach means that parents/carers, class teachers, specialist teachers and learning support practitioners work very effectively together to support our approach of ‘I wonder’ here at RVIS.