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EYFS Overview

Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage at Cathcart Street Primary School.
 
We offer morning sessions for our Little Stars (2-3 year old children) and Foundation 1 (3-4 Year old children) and a Foundation 2 class (4-5 year old children). Our dedicated team works together to provide our children with a seamless transition through their early start in education. We also offer a 30 hour provision for our 2 to 4 year old children, which can be pre paid or funded for eligible parents or carers.
Our dedicated team works together to provide our children with a seamless transition through their early start in education.
Aims 
Here at Cathcart Street's EYFS we believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. We aim to promote independence and a love of learning through child centred, play based learning, that meets each child at their point of need. Our learning environments support each child though high quality provision and adult interactions using an the birth to five document and a communication focused approach to learning.
Joining Cathcart
If you would like your child to join our EYFS please find information in the leaflet below. We happily welcome prospective families to visit school and see our classes in action. 
 
To arrange a visit please contact the school office via telephone or email. 
Telephone number: 0151-647-7349
Email address: schooloffice@cathcartstreet.wirral.sch.uk
Curriculum
 
Here at Cathcart Street, we use the Birth to 5 framework to support our EYFS curriculum. This supports our children in making the many small steps needed to make huge strides in their learning. 
 
We start our EYFS learning journey in our 2 Year Old provision and follow a challenging and progressive curriculum through to the end of Foundation 2 and into Year 1. Our curriculum, alongside providing our children a range of life experiences, gives our children the support and challenge they need to progress and achieve their full potential regardless of their starting points.
 

Areas of Learning

All seven areas of learning will have challenging opportunities for your child to progress in their development including:

  • Personal, Social and Emotional - Self Regulation, Managing Self, Building Relationships
  • Communication and Language - Listening, Attention and Understanding, Speaking 
  • Physical Development - Gross Motor Skills, Fine Motor Skills 
  • Literacy - Comprehension, Word Reading and Writing 
  • Mathematics - Number, Numerical Patterns 
  • Understanding the World - Past and Present, People, Culture and Communities, The Natural World 
  • Expressive Arts and Design - Creating with Materials, Being Imaginative and Expressive. 

Calm and Connect from 8.30am every morning

Thank you,

Foundation Team

Please see individual Long Term Plans and Half Termly Overviews on each class's individual page.
 
Phonics
 
In our 2 year old and Foundation 1 rooms, early phonic activities aspects from Phase 1. Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects, each building on the previous one to strengthen a child's phonological awareness including:
  1. General Sound Discrimination – Environmental Sounds

  2. General Sound Discrimination – Instrumental Sounds

  3. General Sound Discrimination – Body Percussion

  4. Rhythm and Rhyme

  5. Alliteration

  6. Voice Sounds

  7. Oral Blending and Segmenting

While there is considerable overlap between these aspects, the overarching aim is for children to experience regular, planned opportunities to listen carefully and talk extensively about what they hear, see and do. Each aspect is divided into three strands:

  • Tuning into sounds (auditory discrimination)

  • Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing)

  • Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension).

Activities within the seven aspects are designed to help children:

  1. listen attentively;

  2. enlarge their vocabulary;

  3. speak confidently to adults and other children;

  4. discriminate phonemes;

  5. reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear, in order, all through the word;

  6. use sound-talk to segment words into phonemes.

 

In Foundation 2, we use the Read Write Inc. scheme (RWI), which is a systematic synthetic phonics programme. Children develop reading fluency and comprehension, spell and write with confidence and learn to articulate their ideas and understanding.  

Small group phonics lessons are taught daily and there are consistent expectations across the range of abilities. At the end of each half term, the children are assessed to check on their progress. 

Five key principles underpin the teaching in all Read Write Inc. sessions are:

      1. Purpose – know the purpose of every activity and share it with the children, so they know the

         one thing they should be thinking about

     2. Participation – ensure every child participates throughout the lesson.

     3. Partnership work is fundamental to learning

     4. Praise – ensure children are praised for effort and learning, not ability Pace – teach at an

         effective pace and devote every moment to teaching and learning

     5. Passion – be passionate about teaching so children can be engaged emotionally 

How to help your child
 
There are many ways to help your child both at home and in school.
 
The easiest and most effective way to help your child learn and develop is through talk. 

Children learn to talk when parents and caregivers talk to them a lot. You don’t need to make a special time for talking. Any and all talking is good for your child. This includes talking while you dress or bath your baby, talking while you play, singing songs and nursery rhymes, and reading.

When children hear a lot of different words, they’re likely to learn, understand and use plenty of different words themselves.

 
Learn Together Sessions
 
At Cathcart we believe that as a parent you are your child's first educator and value everything that you do to support your child in their learning and development.
Our Learn Together sessions are an invitation for you to come into school and learn with your child in a 'stay and play' type session.
 
Polite Notice
Our EYFS team are continuously working hard to update our EYFS curriculum and provision and will update the website as often as we can.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the school for further information. 
 
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