Positive Relationships: All in a day's work - changes for the new term

Every year around this time we make subtle changes to our practice before the new term starts. Last year, we modified areas of our provision because we had lowered the age of children starting with us. This year we have been contemplating the changes that we would like to make in response to the revised EYFS.

We were fortunate to secure a place on our local authority training for the revised EYFS in June, and this has been beneficial in helping us understand what changes need to be made to our practice. As a team, we feel we now have the chance to really look at all areas of our setting and make the necessary alterations, however small. For example, we are currently finalising our new registration form.

We are looking to include space for parents to indicate whether their child's Progress Check at Two has been carried out or not and provide space in which they can write any information from the check if it has been completed.

PRIME AREAS

We are also using the EYFS guidance to help us put together our own progress check, which we will now include in the children's learning journals, and reviewing children's development in the three Prime areas.

We have always instinctively given preference to Personal, Social and Emotional Development, so making it a prime focus area fits very well into our ethos. In the past year, we have also given lots more thought to Communication and Language as we have supported individual children with delays in this area of development. We will be turning our attention to our physical environment and may need to buy equipment to help to provide opportunities and experiences for our children to be active.

Another area that we have been thinking about adapting is how we plan and document progress. We are very proud of our learning journals but there is always room for improvement. We feel this is an area that all key persons need to tweak, so we are examining the types of observation that we do and what we take from these observations.

Consequently, our reflections over the summer holidays mean that we are looking forward to the coming term and are feeling assured that we can implement the revised framework competently, and also provide the highest quality of care and education for our children.