Early Years Education
Our approach in the Early Years begins with the children’s own experiences and starting points. As soon as they come to us, we talk and play alongside them to establish what they know already and where their interests lie. From there, we offer children real experiences that they get immersed in within a structured and safe nurturing environment which is language rich.
High levels of involvement and well-being including self-regulation help children make academic progress and ensure they achieve as much as they can. Teaching in the Early Years is always engaging, but rooted in structure, routines and expectations to ensure all children feel safe and make the best possible progress.
We work in close partnership with parents & carers, recognising they are the child's first educator and that their input is highly valued and respected. When parents and early years’ staff work together, the results have a positive impact on children’s learning.
Our guiding principles are to:
As children move into Year 1 & Year 2
We've identified that our children often need additional work in securing the Prime Areas of Learning. These are:
If children haven't got these foundations securely in place, they can really struggle as they move into the juniors. We've responded to this by developing a Prime Areas Curriculum for Key Stage 1 which runs alongside the traditional academic curriculum. Not only is this great developmentally for the children, but it also allows adults within the class to act as key person for children to check in with each day. This is an essential component of an attachment aware trauma-informed approach.
Teaching children to read and developing a love of reading is fundamental to our success as a school because reading underpins so many other curriculum subjects. Our prime objective is to make our children fluent in reading and fully literate at the earliest opportunity as this will allow them to get the most out of the wider curriculum and set them up for all their future learning.
Still to be developed