Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage Page... 

We hope you find this area informative and a place that you can find out about the curriculum and the daily practise of your early years child.

We are extremely passionate about ensuring children learn through play based activities both indoors and outdoors and we have enhanced our curriculum through our Forest School work and through intervention programmes such as

'Every Child a Talker’ and ‘Every Child a Mover.’

We are also taking part in a new initiative called 'Word Aware' which encourages children to learn about words. The key words to learn for the week will either be displayed in our nursery, sent home on our topic sheets or on the bottom of your child's weekly spelling sheet. Please encourage your child to learn the words by saying them in a sentence, finding them in books and then explain to others what the words mean.

At Cotmanhay Infant and Nursery school we understand that we are legally required to comply with certain welfare requirements as stated in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (April 2017).

We understand that we are required to:

• Promote the welfare of children.
• Promote good health, preventing the spread of infection and taking appropriate action when children are ill.
• Manage behaviour effectively in a manner appropriate for the children’s stage of developmental and individual needs.
• Ensure all adults who look after the children or who have unsupervised access to them are suitable to do so.
• Ensure that the premises, furniture and equipment is safe and suitable for purpose.
• Ensure that every child receives enjoyable and challenging learning and develop experiences tailored to meet their needs.
• Maintain records, policies and procedures required for safe efficient management of the setting and to meet the needs of the children.
• Ensure that all children in the EYFS have access to water and they have a healthy snack each day.
• We endeavour to meet these requirements.

Assessment in the early years...

We are currently using primary essence for our assessment of the children in early years.

We capture photos of the children and track their progress creating an on-going learning journey that parents can follow.

Each parent has a unique login that cannot be accessed by anyone else. This is a secure area and you will be able to view your child's learning journey only.

Assessment takes place in the Early Years Foundation Stage through ongoing observations, some are displayed on the ‘achievement/ next steps boards’ in each classroom and some are made on an online program called Early Essence which contributes to each pupil’s Learning Journey. Parents are encouraged to be part of this process and are asked to send photographs and descriptions of their child’s experiences.

The Learning Journey’s help to inform future planning and are used to support a detailed final report at the end of the year in the Bears Nursery, the Two Year Development report in the Cubs Nursery and in Reception at the end of the year. Each child’s next steps are shared regularly with parents. 

There are more formal assessments which are competed at the end of each term which focus on key skills in mathematics and literacy. Each child starts a 'Best Book' in Nursery, and a sample of work is collected each term to reflect the child's achievement, ability and progress. This is continued into school and is given to the parents at the end of the reception year. 

Please click on the link below to access the early essence page:

Our Early Years Foundation Stage is made up of the following:

* Three Reception classes with a teacher and teaching assistant in each class.
* A 52 place Nursery for 3-4 year olds called the Bears Nursery with a teacher and four teaching assistants.
* A 16 place Nursery for 2-3 year olds called the Cubs Nursery with four  highly qualified teaching assistants.

ALL OF OUR TEACHING ASSISTANTS IN THE EYFS ARE TRAINED TO AT LEAST A LEVEL 3 LEVEL.

How to help your child learn the phonemes.

We use Letters and Sounds with Super Phonics to teach phonics in our school. We often are asked about how to pronounce the letters and what we say to help pupils form the letters. Here are some videos to support you with this and also with your child's reading and writing at home. 

We have many different enrichment opportunities in our Early years.

Please click on the link above to find out more about what we offer.