Our Vision

At Carlton we are proud of the start we give to all children in Foundation Stage as they join our school. The Foundation Stage is a discrete and very special phase that is focused around the development of “the whole child”, each area of development is closely and seamlessly intertwined together as children learn and develop following a play based curriculum. We strive for children to be happy, resilient, respectful, confident and independent individuals who have a love for their learning. We provide a safe and enabling environment that is built around individual children’s needs and interests. Children build strong relationships and bonds with key adults, ensuring they always feel welcomed, respected and play a key role in our school community, we are passionate about children learning through play and taking pride in their achievements; learning should be engaging and suitably challenging for all children; all staff have high expectations and provide high quality interactions. We are committed to providing learning experiences in an environment where all children have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and strive for excellence.

Our Classes and Team

Carlton EYFS consists of one Nursery Class – Donaldson (AM, PM and 30 hour places) and two Foundation Stage two classes. Children have access to a wide range of high quality, developmentally age appropriate resources and provision indoors and outdoors. Pupils are resilient, independent and engaged learners because the setting is planned to be challenging and interesting throughout their time in EYFS. Children are encouraged to question and investigate through play, promoting high levels of curiosity and wonder. Our team consists of highly effective, skilled and knowledgeable teachers and early years practitioners who have a passion for child development and the magic of Early Years.

Our EYFS Leader is Miss Beet. She is available on the doors at the start and end of each school day if you have any questions.

Our Environment

Our continuous provision in EYFS here at Carlton is very bespoke to our children's needs and cohort. We ensure that the environment is linked carefully to children's interests, in the moment enhancements are added daily and weekly to keep children engaged consistently within their learning. We have continuous provision that will be out all year in provision then following children's interests we adapt and add other resources, ensuring engagement and curiosity of children is always evident to promote those characteristics of effective learning.

Children have access to a high quality outdoor classroom throughout the day, we are outdoors whatever the weather.

“When life gives you a rainy day, splash in the puddles”.

Our Curriculum

Our curriculum approach has been designed from the EYFS educational programmes which ensures all children are receiving the best possible education through a broad and balanced curriculum. It is developed each year for the needs of our children and cohort. This is what makes our curriculum very unique as it is based around children's interests and assessments (what do our children need to develop during their time in EYFS including their experiences with us).

Our curriculum is led from high quality texts, supported by high quality continuous provision and hooks into learning, providing real life contexts. Communication and language underpins our curriculum by supporting our children to question, to explore possibilities and to become confident in communicating with others. Our high quality texts are chosen from what our children are displaying within their play and interests. We ensure that children have opportunities for a range of experiences in our environment through resources, high quality interactions with adults/peers, trips and visitors.

We also ensure reading, writing and math's opportunities are maximised throughout our environment including books in all areas of provision and writing, mathematical opportunities through all areas- this is also supported through adult interaction. Our community and parents are very important to us and are fundamental when thinking about our curriculum approach, children's progression is heightened when you have strong parent partnerships.

Teaching and Learning

At Carlton, in EYFS we follow a teaching and learning approach which focuses on children’s prior learning, linking those skills, introducing a new skills and being able practice this and then embed that independently in continuous provision.

We plan for high quality teaching and learning following children's individual needs and interests. Medium terms plans are utilised effectively to map out skills to be delivered the following term, these are also based on our yearly progression skills map and follow the whole school Enquiry Curriculum. A mathematics and literacy lesson is taught through focused groups and then embedded through the wider curriculum and through positive interactions in child-initiated play and the environment. Our lessons are planned closely linked to our bespoke skills progression documents which have been adapted from the EYFS non-statutory framework, this gives us a skeleton format for the skills to be developed by the end of the Reception Year.

We assess children daily through assessment for learning strategies, questioning, observations, professional discussions/judgement and on our assessment system; Tiny Tracker. These assessments form the basis of our planning for any gaps in learning, we can therefore add resources/enhancements to our provision to meet children's needs and close the gaps in learning whilst ensuring children are immersed in an enabling and challenging environment.

Maths Parents Meeting

Reading Parents Meeting

Useful documents