Early Years Foundation Stage

At Hopton C of E Primary Academy, we welcome children from the term after their third birthday and have nursery places which are funded. As a school, we will top up the funding to 30 hours to offer free places to your child if your child attends our setting for the first 15 hours funded, We are dedicated to fostering a nurturing and stimulating environment for our youngest learners. The EYFS framework is uniquely designed to support your child’s early learning and development, laying the foundational skills necessary for their future educational journey. Our committed staff prioritises a balanced approach that combines play, exploration, and structured learning, ensuring that each child can thrive according to their individual needs and interests.

A brief overview of the EYFS curriculum:

The Early Years curriculum is made up of 7 areas of learning, these are split into Prime and Specific areas.

Prime Areas:

Communication and Language
Physical development
Personal, Social and Emotional development

Specific Areas:

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the world
Expressive arts and design

We understand the importance of the early years in shaping a child’s future. That’s why our EYFS curriculum is crafted to promote not only academic skills but also social, emotional, and physical development. We encourage parental involvement every step of the way and are keen to work together with you to provide a supportive and enriching experience for your child. Discover more about how we can partner to give your child the best possible start in their education.

We work with Early Excellence and have had a new classroom in place for October 2025. Please see below or come for a visit to see for yourself!

Please follow the long term plans on the Learning tab to see our planning.

EYFS

Intent

At Hopton C of E Primary Academy our Early Years curriculum has been designed to encourage children to develop independence, curiosity, and a love of learning, while recognising every child as a unique individual. We provide children with a rich and inspiring learning environment that allows children to learn through play and exploration, encouraging active learning and creative, critical thinking. Adult interactions allow high quality opportunities to develop and enrich children’s vocabulary and language skills. Alongside independent learning opportunities, we deliver direct teaching to support children’s development in early reading, literacy, and maths. Our overall aim is to develop happy, confident and curious learners with the fundamental skills and knowledge needed to achieve in school and beyond.

Implementation

At Hopton C of E Primary Academy, we offer a curriculum which is broad and balanced and which builds on the knowledge, understanding and skills of all children, whatever their starting points.

This is achieved through:

Early excellence approach
Carefully selected continuous and enhanced provision, indoors and outdoors to engage and challenge the children.
A balance of child and adult led learning opportunities.
Direct teaching in phonics, reading, writing and maths everyday.
Engaging phonics programme ‘Little Wandle’ to embed early reading skills.
Developing a love of reading through our bespoke ‘Essential reads’ which is a set of high quality core texts that children should share throughout their EYFS journey.
Use of Drawing Club to teach the English curriculum, through the imitation of stories, traditional tales and animations that they learn using key vocabulary, actions, drawings and codes.
Maths mastery taught through Mastering Number programme, alongside White Rose activities in the provision learning through exploration and adult directed activities using concrete manipulatives.
Emmanuel project and daily collective worship assemblies to ensure children have the opportunity to engage with religion and reflect on what this means to them.
Weekly Forest school sessions which allow all children to take risks in an unpredictable environment whilst developing skills like independence, resilience and perseverance as well as promoting mental health and wellbeing.

Impact

Children are confident and independent learners who make good levels of progress from their individual starting points. They develop their characteristics of learning and are able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing. Children develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including literacy, mathematics and physical development using these in different ways. All children have a love of learning and are well prepared for the next stage in their learning journey.