At Dove Green Private School, the Foundation Stage takes children from ages 3-5 and is broken down into two year groups.
- FS1 (Ages 3-4)
- FS2 (Ages 4-5)
Here at Dove Green we provide a broad and balanced curriculum for our youngest children, aged 3 to 5 years, based on the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Children learn skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development.
The 3 Prime Areas are a focus initially and these are: Personal, Social and Emotional Development; Physical Development; Communication and Language Development. These Prime areas are those most essential for a child’s healthy development and future learning.
As they grow, the Prime areas will help to develop skills in 4 Specific Areas: Literacy Development; Mathematics; Understanding the World; Expressive Arts and Design. As active learners, our children acquire skills and knowledge in many different ways.
We believe that for learning to be effective, it is not ‘what’ children learn that matters, but rather ‘how’ they learn, and this ‘how’ is what practitioners consider when planning learning environments and experiences for children.
Children are exposed to ‘empowering environments’ which act as the ‘third teacher’. These environments are set up to ensure children build independence and exercise their right to choose their own preferences.
Our teachers and learning support assistants are highly skilled in facilitating children’s learning through observing, questioning and playing with the students. This allows the adults to gain an accurate picture of each child’s current capabilities and then plan out those crucial next steps. The teachers are constantly adapting the environment in line with the interests of the children whilst exposing them to new experiences too.
The Characteristics of Effective Learning describe how children learn in the Foundation Stage and can be divided into 3 groups:
Playing and Exploring – Finding out and exploring, being willing to ‘have a go’ and playing with what they know.
Active Learning – being involved and concentrating, trying and persevering, taking pleasure from achieving what they set out to do.
Creating and Thinking Critically – having their own ideas, making links, choosing ways to do things.
We believe that every child is unique and our curriculum is designed to treat all children as individuals. Our teachers get to know each child inside-out so that they can tailor each of the learning. Our holistic approach means that parents/carers, class teachers, specialist teachers and learning support assistants work very effectively together to support our ethos ‘learning together, growing together’.
Most importantly, we believe that happy and well-motivated children are good learners. The Foundation Stage is a safe, secure and friendly environment for our youngest children to gain confidence and independence, in preparation for the next stage of their school lives. It is an excellent foundation for future learning.
