EYFS
The staff in the Early Years Foundation stage are passionate about our Early Years’ vision and what it stands for. We believe our vision is embedded in our everyday practise within our environment, both indoors in our airy classrooms as well as the outside learning environment and our extensive school grounds.
All of our classes throughout the Early Years, follow the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. This Nursery curriculum covers 7 areas of development, catering for the different age bands that are developmental, allowing for individual progress, from birth to 5 years of age.
Through child-initiated play and adult directed activities, we provide the children with a variety of stimulating, exciting and engaging opportunities where they can explore and develop their learning experiences, helping them to make sense of the world which they live in.
Our daily routine offers small groups and individualised programmes which ensure that each child maximises their progression in a happy and organised environment whilst experiencing music, swimming, physical education and a foreign language under the structure and guidance of specialist teachers.
The children have directed teaching times: a focus activity – which is mostly topic or skill related, a phonics lesson and a maths lesson. All of these lessons are cross curricular linked as much as possible to make their learning “real “. The children enjoy a good balance of teacher directed time with their own child initiated time, where we encourage them to use the skills they have learnt at Nursery, independently, either inside or outside. The outside learning environment is an extension of our classrooms and we use our wonderful learning garden as well as the extensive school grounds during our weekly forest school excursions.
KEY STAGE 1
In Key Stage 1, our experienced staff enjoy a thorough handover with the Early Years team and create a seamless and highly successful transition out of the Early Years programme.
The children continue with phonics on a daily basis, drawing from both the Letters and Sounds scheme as well as aspects of Read Write Inc. The phonics is complemented by daily reading which is done three to four times a week on a one to one basis, but also as a group in class, during phonics and of course throughout the school day.
Both English and Maths are covered on a daily basis. Our English curriculum will incorporate writing, SPaG and also involves discreet handwriting lessons, helping the children to continue to make the transition from print to cursive script. We firmly believe that the love of writing stems from experience so you will often find our writers taking a walk around the school grounds collecting the materials to build their ‘Owl Babies’ nests, performing their ideas or finding some other way to immerse themselves in whatever they are about to write about.
In addition to these key areas, the children will be taught Science and Topic which incorporates History and Geography and is in turn, closely linked to what is being covered in science.
The children are also taught computing, PSHCE, RE and enjoy specialist teaching for French, Music, Swimming and Games / PE.
