Early Years Foundation Stage

Happy Christmas Everyone

Children's Christmas Book

Kipper's Christmas Eve
by Mick Inkpen

Lovely story about Kipper and his Christmas Eve preparations.

Children's Christmas book

This is the Star by Joyce Dunbar

This wonderful book is available as full size or as a mini book. It is great for children of all ages and, as the illustrations are so lovely, it would be really nice to use when telling the story, not just for reading.

Amazon link

Wonderful Websites

Build a Gingerbread House and many other silly things, with this festive website. You can also make a silly turkey or design a cake. Lots of fun for Christmas

Link to website

Practitioner book of the month

Sounds like Playing

By Marjorie Ouvry

This is a really useful little book to help practitioners to develop their music provision and also to support children's learning across the curriculum.

Early Education

Wingate Training Base:A laboratory of possibilities

County Durham’s Early Years Training Centre:
Offers training courses in care and education 0-5 designed for a range of target audiences - covering a variety of aspects of the early years agenda. Bespoke courses can be designed to meet your specific needs, including :

• school development partnerships

• visit to the Centre

• conference and meeting facilities

• film commissions and hire of the Sony HVR-Z1

More details of Publications and training

EYFS Profile moderation for 2008-9

This years statements are from Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy, Physical Development and Knowledge and Understanding of the World.

Details of which schools will have moderation visits will be available soon. Dates and venues of cluster meetings for all other schools will also be published soon - initally via the Extranet and then later on this website.

Further details

The Early Years Foundation Stage Conference & Exhibition - Moving Success

Keynote Speakers:Paddy Beels, O.B.E. and Jenny Woodbridge, Director of Early Excellence Training and Resource Centre will be an inspiration for Early Years and Childcare practitioners.
The conference will explore new developments, celebrate successes and achievements, share expertise, challenge thinking and raise the profile of Early Years Practitioners.
Friday, 27 February 2009, Marriott Hotel, Gosforth Park, Newcastle

Full details

Foundation Stage Profile

Reception teachers are advised to use profile statements for their assessments this year. Find attached sheets for this purpose.

Link to documents

Early Years Foundation Stage is here!!!

As you should know we now have a new, statutory framework for ALL professionals working with children from birth to five + years. If the documents are unfamiliar to you follow the link below to download and if in reception use the link below to get the new Foundation Stage Profile

EYFS site

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile

If you are a Reception teacher you should now be using the new Early Years Foundation Stage Profile to assess your children.

The handbooks have already been sent to schools, but if your copy has gone adrift, you can download it directly from the site using the link below.

Download

Early Years Foundation Stage

Guidance: The key person in reception classes and small nursery settings

This guidance was issued by the National Strategies Early Years and is well woth reading

Download document

Planning for CLL and PSRN

These sheets should be useful to identify the learning in CLL and PSR&N on a weekly basis

Download documents

Long term planning

Long term planning formats are now available. Follow the links below to download.

Long term planning 2

Long term planning 3

Long term planning 4

Long term planning 5

Long term planning 6

EYFS Durham suggested Medium and Short term planning formats

Here are some planning formats devised by the Early Years central team, designed to fulfil the requirements fo the EYFS.

It is thought that the weekly plan could be for more than one week, depending on the responses of the children.

For short term the daily room plan or the focus sheet should be used NOT both!

Download formats

Quality Improvement Principles

You might be interested in looking at the new suggested framework for LAs
and National organisations to use to improve quality outcomes for children.

You can download a copy from the website - use link below.

Link to National Children's Bureau Website

Fun, Fiction and Phonics

With phonics so much in our thoughts at the moment, we thought you might enjoy an easy link to the phonics website - so here it is! You should find access to all the information you need.

Phonics Website

Letters and Sounds

This is the up-dated version of Playing with Sounds. 5 copies are being sent directly to schools in anticipation of them being used with Foundation Stage, KS1 and further. Look out for these in the next few weeks and try to attend the forthcoming training.

Download a copy

CLL Audit documents

As a result of the Rose review these Audits have been produced to help practitioners evaluate the quality of their provision.

Download audits

New County Guidance documents for Foundation Stage

Two new documents have been published on the extranet to support practitioners and headteachers:

1. Speech, Language and Communication: A Resource for Early Years Practioners

2. Using Foundation Stage data to support Self Evaluation and School Improvement.

Guidance documents for foundation stage - national

Here is a list of all the documents of which foundation stage practitioners should be aware. Save and then open the table to view and order.

National documents

Early Years Publications

These magazines represent a really useful source of up to date information on professional matters. The ideas presented for new experiences for children are also really helpful in any busy early years setting.

Links to magazine websites