The EYFS Reading Enhanced Curriculum (REC) is centred around the love of books and the importance of reading and vocabulary development. It has been developed to work well with the National EYFS Curriculum 2023.
Books have been selected for F1 and F2 from the National Top 30 Reads (which links with the Year 1-6 selections) and have been carefully selected to be delivered throughout the academic year to show progression.
Key books selected link to a long-term yearly plan and have been chosen to support key themes and interests.
Activities around each carefully selected would book, are developed across areas of learning over several weeks.
The EY REC contains ambitious links to strategies such as, Talk for Writing, Mastering the Curriculum and the school’s systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP), with the intention of preparing children well for Year 1 and beyond. The needs of all children have been carefully considered when setting this ambition. This ambition remains high for all children appropriate adaptations are made for children’s unique starting points.
Cross curricular links provide plentiful opportunities for children to explore, test out and revisit a broad range of purposeful, engaging and deliberately chosen content across areas of learning.
Story time book recommendations link to the literacy book focus for that week which will ensure story times are purposeful and references can be made to the literacy book focus. The length of books and difficulty of texts progress over the year to promote year 1 readiness.
Connections are made throughout the EYFS curriculum to children’s wider personal development. For example, teaching children about relationships, friendships and friendly bodies (a start to the RSE curriculum) is high profile and highlighted in blue on the long-term plan. Aspects of the EYFS welfare requirements are also addressed through the EYFS REC curriculum.