The foundation Stage for Early Years Education covers the seven areas of learning and the three Characteristics of Effective learning.
The seven areas are split into the Prime Areas and the Specific Areas.
The Prime Areas are seen as the building blocks for all learning.
The Characteristics of Effective Learning is looking at HOW the child learns.
PAL (play and learn) time is really important as it allows the child to explore the environment, make choices, have their own ideas, develop imagination and confidence while making friendships or playing on their own.
During this time adults will be interacting with the children , playing alongside them, observing them, building confidence with praise, encouraging them to learn by trial and error, helping them to build on their own interests and develop their understanding.
We will constantly be helping to develop their confidence by celebrating their unique contributions and ideas and teach them that is o.k. to make mistakes, extending their play to develop their learning all of the time.
We believe that all of this will develop their independence and enable them to have their own thoughts and ideas, which they feel proud about.
We follow the letters and sounds framework to teach phonics with Jolly phonics to support the learning.
In Nursery the children play lots of listening and sound games to get them ready to hear the different sounds which make up a word and then by the end of the year we start teaching the sounds of the letters in the alphabet.
In reception we recap the letter sounds and start to practice blending words so that the children are able to read and write simple words and then moving onto sentences.
We integrate phonics into our daily routine.
It is taught in a concrete session and then the children are encouraged to use what has been taught during PAL time through a range of different resources and games.
We assess how well the children are doing through our observations of what they are doing during PAL time. This is recorded in their learning journal or on Tapestry.
The Learning journal is a file to keep all the children's work. It is kept in school for and the children are able to look at it and see their 'special work'.
Tapestry is the online Learning Journal system we use to record each child’s learning and shows snap shots of children’s achievements and progress in relation to the EYFS curriculum. Not every activity they do will be recorded as a rough guide there should be a new entry once a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less!
As soon as an observation is published by the adults in the class parents will receive an email to notify you of this and you can view it on an app on your mobile phone.
Using your secure username ad password you will be able to see photos, videos and samples of work your children have done. It is interactive so you will be able to comment, like or even post your own observations from experiences out of school.
Next steps will be noted in some of the observations which will give the adults what needs to be worked on next.
We also welcome observations and feedback on Tapestry observation. If you see your child doing something new and amazing at home, please record it onto Tapestry so that we can celebrate it at school with the rest of the class.
Please see below a welcome booklet with pictures of our environment and an example of what a typical day would look like.
If you would like a tour of the provision. please phone the office to arrange a visit.
Click here for more information.