Our Curriculum

The EYFS was revised in September 2020 and was legally effective from 1st September 2021 for all providers of early years education and care. 

The Government’s two key aims for the changes to the EYFS:

• To improve outcomes at age five, particularly in early language and literacy
• Reduce workload so that practitioners can spend more time interacting with children in their care.

Planning Our Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum

Brunel considers the all round development of your child. We provide opportunities which enable your child to; exercise options and express ideas, reflect on experience and information, share thoughts, make decisions, make discoveries and explore and engage in first hand experiences. Our curriculum is designed to be accessible for all children, regardless of any special educational need or disability. 

Our allocation of time, space and equipment will provide opportunities for your child to develop to their potential through carefully planned activities. We support and enhance your child's learning ensuring they make at least good progress over time. We plan themes on an annual basis (long term plans) but these are not 'set in stone' and are fluid to address the ever growing and changing needs of all our children. We see them as more of a 'working document'!

Our curriculum is designed around the needs of our young children and is organised into seven areas of Learning and Development.

These are:

• Communication and Language
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts & Design

We plan through a topic based approach. To keep you well informed about the children’s activities our plans are displayed:-

• On the Notice Board in our foyer
• Here on our school website 

Phonics

At Brunel we follow Twinkl Phonics. The Twinkl Phonics Programme offers a coherently planned sequence of lessons that supports the effective teaching of phonics. Throughout Level 1, our children will develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to discriminate between different sounds before being able to sound them out verbally. 

By the end of Level 1 children will:

• have experience a wealth of listening activities, including song, stories and rhymes
• be able to distinguish between speech sounds
• orally segment and blend words
• recognise spoken words that rhyme and provide a string of rhyming words
• identify words that begin with the same sound