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TWHF EYFS Core Commitments: What Matters Most

“Enriching Lives, Building Strong Foundations, Inspiring Futures.”  
At our school and º£½ÇÉçÇø, we are united by a shared ambition: The Best Start in Life. 

Our eight EYFS Core Commitments are embedded across all our schools and settings, ensuring that every child receives an equitable, high-quality early years offer. These commitments are not just statements; they are lived values that shape our daily practice and long-term vision.

We recognise the crucial importance of the early years—not only for a child’s current development but for their lifelong success. That’s why we are committed to honing and embedding these principles in every classroom, every interaction, and every relationship.

Our Core Commitments:

1. A Nurturing, Inclusive Environment with a Strong Sense of Belonging
2. Exceptional Teaching, High-Quality CPD, and Meaningful Interactions
3. Oracy and Language-Rich Environments
4. Immersive Literacy and Numeracy: Books, Rhymes, Number and Storytelling
5. Child-Centred, Play-Based Learning
6. Equity for All Groups of Learners
7. Personal Development and Positive Behaviour Foundations
8. Strong Parent and Carer Partnerships

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Across our schools, we ensure that:

• Quality talk and meaningful discussion permeate every learning environment.
• Children are immersed in language-rich, playful experiences that support their communication, thinking, and creativity.
• A strong sense of belonging and community is nurtured—for both children and their families—so that every child feels safe, valued, and ready to thrive.
• Our staff are empowered through high-quality CPD and collaboration, ensuring consistency and excellence in teaching and care.
• We foster equity, inclusion, and aspiration, giving every child the very best start in life.

These commitments are the foundation of our Early Years practice. They guide us in helping children grow, develop, and achieve wonderfully—today and into the future.

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Our EYFS Curriculum

At our school, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum is designed to give children the best possible start to their education. It is carefully planned to meet the requirements of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and reflects our commitment to high-quality, child-centred learning.

We focus on the seven areas of learning and development:

Prime Areas

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Specific Areas

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

We follow the TWHF ENRICH curriculum for Early Years, ensuring children are immersed in carefully selected stories and rhymes from the TWHF reading spine. This helps children develop a deep understanding of traditional tales and classic stories.

Reading at the Heart

Reading is at the heart of our EYFS curriculum. Through carefully chosen, vocabulary-rich texts, children are immersed in language from the very beginning. These texts reflect the world around them, spark curiosity, and build the moral foundations they need to thrive. Reading is woven through every aspect of our provision, helping children develop a love of stories, storytelling, rhyme, and rhythm. All children are encouraged to engage with books widely and deeply, laying the foundations for a lifelong love of reading and supporting knowledge acquisition across the EYFS curriculum.
Children follow a well-sequenced Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme to enable them to become confident readers.

Early Writing and Mathematics

Through a Talk for Writing approach, children rehearse and practise sentences to support their early writing skills. Our purposeful provision encourages children to become confident, enthusiastic writers.
In mathematics, children develop number understanding through both taught sessions and high-quality continuous provision.

Purposeful Provision
Our continuous and enhanced provision is carefully planned to create a stimulating, engaging, and motivating learning environment. It offers rich opportunities for children to explore, investigate, and apply their learning through purposeful play and hands-on experiences.

The Power of Play
At our school, we believe that play is the foundation of all learning in the early years. It is not just a way for children to have fun—it is how they make sense of the world around them.

Through carefully planned and purposeful play, children develop essential skills that support their growth across all areas of learning. Play helps children to:

• Think critically and solve problems
• Communicate and build language
• Develop social skills
• Express creativity and imagination
• Strengthen physical development

Play also supports emotional wellbeing, giving children the freedom to express themselves, build confidence, and develop resilience in a safe and nurturing environment.
Our Early Years team creates a rich, stimulating environment where play is valued and supported by skilled adults. We know when to step in to extend learning and when to step back to let children lead. This balance ensures that every child has the opportunity to thrive and develop a lifelong love of learning.
We use the TWHF Progressions in Play to guide and support learning in areas such as the mud kitchen, stage area, and construction zones. This child-centred approach is rooted in rich vocabulary and language development.

Outdoor Learning
We place a strong emphasis on outdoor learning as a vital part of our EYFS curriculum. The outdoors offers unique opportunities for exploration, discovery, and physical development that cannot always be replicated indoors.
Outdoor learning supports children to:

• Develop gross motor skills
• Build resilience and independence
• Connect with nature
• Enhance wellbeing
• Extend learning across the curriculum

Our outdoor spaces are thoughtfully designed to be safe, engaging, and inspiring. Children are encouraged to explore in all weathers, developing confidence, creativity, and a deep understanding of the world around them.

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Starting School 
At our school, we understand that school readiness is about more than just academic skills—it’s about ensuring children are emotionally, socially, and physically prepared for the next stage of their learning journey. 
Our curriculum and provision are designed to nurture these essential foundations, helping every child transition smoothly into school life.

Useful Links

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Nursery Provisions

Our Nursery Offer

Our nursery provisions are built on the same core principles that underpin our Early Years practice, ensuring every child receives the very best start to their learning journey.

Our nurseries are language-rich, nurturing environments where children are immersed in stories, traditional tales, classic books, and nursery rhymes. Reading is at the heart of everything we do. Children engage in book talk, storytelling, and rhythm and rhyme activities that build the foundations of oracy, vocabulary, and a lifelong love of reading.

We follow a Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) approach through short, focused sessions that support early reading development. Alongside this, our carefully planned provision balances child-led exploration with purposeful adult-guided learning. Children’s interests are followed and celebrated, while the environment is intentionally designed to prepare them for Reception and beyond.

Our nursery Provisions offer:

• Well-sequenced learning in number, supporting early mathematical understanding
• Talk for Writing-inspired activities, helping children rehearse and construct sentences
• Rich opportunities for physical development, both fine and gross motor
• Play Progressions, used by skilled practitioners to guide and extend learning through play

Above all, our first Core Commitment is to provide a nurturing and welcoming environment. Skilled and dedicated staff ensure every child feels safe, valued and excited to learn. Children are supported to develop the confidence, curiosity and key skills they need for a successful transition into Reception.

Our 2-Year-Old Provisions

Our 2-year-old provisions offer warm, nurturing environments where children begin their learning journey through play, exploration, and connection. Just like in the rest of our Early Years curriculum, children are immersed in stories, nursery rhymes, and rich language experiences from the very start. 

Carefully planned provisions support their interests while gently introducing routines, early number, and communication skills. Our environments are language-rich and thoughtfully designed to build confidence, independence, and a love of learning. With a strong focus on physical development and emotional wellbeing, our youngest learners feel safe, happy, and excited to come to school each day.

Reading is the "Gateway to Learning" and therefore all pupils need to be able to read well to access the full curriculum. The TWHF ENRich Reading curriculum puts developing the basic mechanics of reading at its core. Although word reading and language comprehension are integral to each other, the TWHF ENRich Reading Curriculum is engineered so that the development of both is taught discretely. By explicitly teaching the RICH knowledge and skills of both Word Reading and Language Comprehension, pupils can fully read and understand text at the level required for their age. This will then enable them to cultivate and NOURISH a love of reading and EMBED their reading skills, unlocking learning across the wider curriculum.

To develop RICH knowledge and skills, pupils will be exposed to daily explicit word reading teaching. It is important to ensure a balance of word reading and language comprehension development across the week. In EYFS and Year 1, pupils' word reading development is embedded within the SSP programme. Simultaneously, pupils in EYFS and Year 1 will also have the opportunity to high-quality book talk.

As pupils become phonologically aware, the focus of the teaching of word reading will shift towards developing fluency. When pupils move through the school, daily whole class lessons will ensure pupils' reading accuracy; automaticity (speed) and prosody keeps pace with the level of text required for their age.

To support pupils who fall behind, additional "accelerated" catch up interventions will be put in place. To further develop RICH knowledge and skills, pupils will also be exposed to daily language comprehension teaching. As pupils move away from the SSP programme (in Year 2 and KS2), daily whole class lessons will be delivered. Centred around high-quality extracts and texts (with aspirational vocabulary), pupils will be explicitly taught language comprehension skills and strategies, enabling them to first understand and then explore the level of text they are required to read for their age.

The TWHF ENRich Writing curriculum is at the heart of our whole curriculum. The writing curriculum is designed so that the teaching and learning of new writing knowledge and skills is progressive and complements the ongoing literacy fluency development.

In each year group, through every unit, teachers will explicitly teach new knowledge and skills, centred around a specific genre and purpose for writing. New knowledge and skills will be introduced, taught, practised and refined through a "5 phase" process. Initially, children are immersed in the unit genre and writing purpose through a powerful stimulus which they will explore through a range of oracy activities. From here, pupils are expertly taught how to apply the new skills and are given opportunities to develop this through well- planned deliberate practice activities. Pupils will then apply these skills to a focused writing task where they can draft, edit and revise.

Finally, pupils are given various means to present and publish their final piece of writing to celebrate with their chosen audience. Simultaneously, pupils will be given regular opportunities to refine and develop their vocabulary, communication skills, spelling accuracy and handwriting style.

The TWHF ENRich Maths curriculum enables learning for each year group that is planned from the relevant National Curriculum objectives. Sourced from the Can Do Maths resources, these are blocked into themes or units and then sequenced into concise and progressive manageable steps, to create a coherent mathematical journey through the learning. New learning is taught through the daily lessons whilst regular practice and review (MOT) sessions are used to practise, consolidate and revisit previous learning. In addition, daily opportunities to consolidate number fluency are built in to the day to allow for the efficient, automatic recall of key number facts and procedures.

New Learning Session - To develop RICH knowledge and skills, pupils will be exposed to daily, explicit teaching of new mathematical learning. New learning has been designed to ensure a coherent progression through the curriculum. This enables all pupils to develop a deep and connected understanding of mathematics so that they can apply it in a range of contexts. Representation and structure has been considered so that teachers can carefully select representations of mathematics to expose mathematical structure. Variation is embedded into new learning, to draw closer attention to a key feature of a mathematical concept or structure. Pupils are simultaneously exposed to problems and reasoning, which enable mathematical thinking and is central to how pupils learn mathematics.

Prior Learning Session - Pupils are exposed to daily teaching and deliberate practice of tasks that activate prior learning. Through daily MOT sessions pupils will have opportunities to retrieve and use prior knowledge so that it can be easily remembered and recalled during New Learning sessions. MOT sessions will also include pre-teaching, weekly arithmetic practice sessions and 'Keep-up' opportunities for children who need longer to fully grasp a new concept or skill.

Number Fluency Sessions - Short efficient, accurate recall of key number facts and procedures is essential for fluency, freeing pupils' minds to think deeply about concepts and problems. To support the development of this, the TWHF ENRich Maths Curriculum has been designed to offer daily opportunities for pupils to revisit and recall number facts and procedures through short, high-quality tasks and activities. Revisiting previously learned knowledge and skills allows pupils to have the flexibility to move between different contexts and representations of mathematics, to recognise relationships and make connections, and to choose appropriate methods and strategies to solve problems.