Other policy
Policy: Early Years Foundation Stage (birth – five)
1 Mar 2007
A comprehensive framework for the learning, development and care of children in the early years the EYFS creates a distinct, coherent phase for all children from birth to five years old.
Child Development Overview
- Birth – eleven months: Children are learning from the moment of birth. Even before their first words they find out a lot about language by hearing people talking and are especially interested when it involves themselves and their daily lives.
- 8 – 20 months: Building on their communication skills, children now begin to develop a sense of self and are more able to express their needs and feelings. Alongside non-verbal communication children learn a few simple words for everyday things and people. With encouragement and plenty of interaction with carers, children's communication skills grow and their vocabulary expands very rapidly during this period.
- 16 – 26 months: Pretend play helps children to learn about a range of possibilities. Adults are an important source of security and comfort.
- 22 – 36 months: In this phase, children's language is developing rapidly and many are beginning to put sentences together. Joining in conversations with children is an important way for children to learn new things and to begin to think about past, present and future.
- 30 – 50 months: Children's language is now much more complex, as many become adept at using longer sentences. Conversations with adults become a more important source of information, guidance and reassurance.
The four EYFS principles that guide the work of all practitioners are grouped into four distinct but complementary themes.
1. A Unique Child
Babies and children develop in individual ways and at varying rates. Every area of development: physical, cognitive, linguistic, spiritual, social and emotional, is equally important.
A skilful communicator:
- Babies are especially interested in other people and in communicating with them using eye contact, crying, cooing and gurgling to have “conversations”.
- Babies and children are sociable and curious, and they explore the world through relationships with others and through all their senses.
- Babies and children develop their competence in communicating through having frequent, enjoyable interactions with other people, in contexts that they understand.
- Children learn to communicate in many ways, not just by talking, but also in non-verbal ways such as gestures, facial expressions and gaze direction, in drawing, writing and singing, and through dance, music and drama.
2. Positive Relationships
Parents as Partners. Parents are children's first and most enduring educators.
Communication:
- All communication is important, including gesture, signing and body language. Actions can speak louder than words.
Supporting learning
Listening to children:
- Babies, very young children and those with speech or other developmental delay or disability may not say anything verbally, though they may communicate a great deal in other ways.
- Talking with children may take place in English or in their home language, in signing or through body language and gesture.
- Whatever form of communication is used, children need space and time to respond and to know that the practitioner is giving full attention and encouragement to their thinking.
3. Enabling Environments
The learning environment: A rich and varied environment supports children’s learning and development.
4. Learning and Development
The EYFS is made up of six areas of learning and development:
1) Personal, social and emotional development
2) Communication, language and literacy: Language for Communication is about how children become communicators.
- Learning to listen and speak emerges out of non-verbal eye contact, and hand gesture. These skills develop as children interact with others, listen to and use language, extend their vocabulary and experience stories, songs, poems and rhymes.
- Language for Thinking is about how children learn to use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences and how they use talk to clarify their thinking and ideas or to refer to events they have observed or are curious about.
- Linking Sounds and Letters is about how children develop the ability to distinguish between sounds and become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. They develop understanding of the correspondence between spoken and written sounds and learn to link sounds and letters and use their knowledge to read and write simple words by sounding out and blending.
- Reading
- Writing
- Handwriting
3) What Communication, Language and Literacy means for children:
To become skilful communicators, babies and young children need to be with people with whom they have warm and loving relationships, such as their family or carers and, in a group situation, a key person whom they know and trust.
- Babies respond differently to different sounds and from an early age are able to distinguish sound patterns. They use their voices to make contact and to let people know what they need and how they feel.
- All children learn best through activities and experiences that engage all the senses. Music, dance, rhymes and songs support language development.
- As children develop speaking and listening skills they build the foundations for literacy, for making sense of visual and verbal signs and ultimately for reading and writing. Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy
4) Knowledge and understanding of the world
5) Creative development
6) Physical development
(EYFS, 2007)
For more information visit www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/eyfs/.
