Early Years at Our School  

At Bursley Academy we place great value on the development of children as individuals and providing them with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to prepare them for the challenges in Key Stage One and beyond. Our calming environment provides a multi-sensory experience filled with well-paced and variable learning opportunities that build the children’s knowledge and develop skills in all areas of learning laid out in the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. Our children are continuously immersed in active and enjoyable experiences, we develop resilience and challenge their learning as they revisit activities indifferent ways.  

Our curriculum is designed around what we know our pupils need so that they can gain the knowledge, skills and understanding they require for success. They can only do that if we embed the right practices for learning through the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning – Play and Exploration, Active Learning and Creative and Critical Thinking.  Our curriculum is based around carefully chosen stories giving us the opportunities to teach children about what is important in their world as well as the wider world around them both academically and emotionally.  Teaching phonics daily ensures that children are given the tools that they need to read and write for themselves.    

In Early Years we value imagination and creativity and seek to create a sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning through indoor and outdoor provision, alongside trips, visits and forest school sessions. Some of our children arrive below national expectations for their age. We have to teach them how to listen, speak and meet the high expectations for behaviour by working together and being kind. As such, we prioritise the three prime areas, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language and Physical Development in Nursery. Our enabling environment and warm, skilful adult interactions support the children as they begin to link learning to their play and exploration.  

Counting and number is an integral part of the EYFS and our children are taught the counting principals from Nursery through every day, practical experiences as well as direct teaching. This underpins the value of number, focusing children's understanding throughout Reception to ensure that knowledge is embedded so children are ready for the KS1 curriculum.   

As the pupils transition into Reception, we invest time and energy into helping pupils reflect on their own goals by aiming high and developing a love of reading, writing and number. This is delivered through a holistic curriculum which maximises opportunities for meaningful cross-curricular links and learning experiences as well as promoting the unique child by offering extended periods of play and sustained thinking following children’s interests and ideas.  

Our aim in the EYFS is to build strong foundations rooted in academic success as well as development, so that ultimately our pupils go on to be happy, curious life-long learners.