Early Years Foundation Stage
Welcome to Early Years at Gilmour Primary!
We are thrilled to welcome you to our vibrant and nurturing Early Years setting, where your child’s journey into learning begins. We believe the first years of school are foundational, and we have crafted a curriculum and environment that is warm, stimulating, and rich with purposeful opportunities.
A Foundational Approach to Learning
At Gilmour, every experience is planned to help children learn foundational knowledge within our beautiful indoor and outdoor environments. We encourage children to develop crucial Characteristics of Effective Learning:
- Playing and Exploring: Finding engagement and wonder in the world around them.
- Active Learning: Developing the motivation and determination to keep trying.
- Creating and Thinking Critically: Unlocking new ideas and solving problems.
Our planning is deeply connected to the Gilmour Core Values of Resilience, Enjoyment, Well-being, Ambition, and being Unique, ensuring these principles are woven into your child’s daily experience.
Our Curriculum and Key Focuses
The heart of our curriculum is the development of the prime areas of learning: Communication and Language, Physical Development, and Personal, Social and Emotional Development. We place a high priority on your child becoming a confident speaker and we use the Read Write Inc. systematic phonics program to develop the essential foundations of early reading.
We use the CUSP Early Years framework to plan a broad and balanced curriculum that truly values your child’s prior knowledge and cultural background. This framework clearly outlines the knowledge children will gain and remember from birth to five years old.
Rich Experiences and Expert Interactions
Our timetable is carefully balanced to ensure children benefit from a mix of teacher-directed activities and high-quality, play-based opportunities. We prioritise and plan for quality interactions with our skilled adults during play.To deepen learning, all new topics begin with a structured story—a high-quality text from our Reading Spine. This is used to unlock themes, ideas, and introduce new and ambitious vocabulary. Our planned activities are designed to challenge children, encouraging them to push boundaries, take managed risks, and immerse themselves in experiences that help them acquire key knowledge and develop new skills.