Welcome to our Early Years Foundation Stage
We are the youngest children in school. We are Nursery and Reception children. Our teacher is Miss Dews (Early Years Leader). Mrs. McGee (Early Years Teaching Assistant – currently on long term leave), Miss Jackson (Early Years Teaching Assistant – long term cover), Miss Ferguson (Early Years Teaching Assistant), Mrs. Robson (Early Years Teaching Assistant) and Miss Dawson (Early Years Teaching Assistant) also work with us. Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Dower and Mrs. Ferguson support us during lunchtimes and Mrs. Wilkinson works with us on Wednesdays.
Miss Dews and Mrs. McGee are our Key Workers.
Our Unit
Our unit is made up of two big classrooms, two outdoor areas and a corridor space. We also use the garden and field areas in the school grounds. Our Nursery and Reception children work together most of the day. This helps our older children to develop their personal and social skills, helping and supporting the younger children. It ensures the younger children settle into Nursery quickly as they have excellent peer role models to learn from. The mixed age class also provides a seamless transition from Nursery to Reception for our youngest children.
The provision in the Early Years Unit is enhanced regularly in response to the children’s changing needs and interests. We plan carefully to ensure the children are continually learning through their play. Writing, reading and mathematical skills are planned into the unit each week. Children are provided with many opportunities for developing their personal, social and communication skills within their play.
Our Timetable
Nursery sessions run from 8.45 am – 11.45 am and from 12.15 pm – 3.15 pm. We also offer full day sessions for our Nursery children. Parents can choose from all day Monday, all day Tuesday and Wednesday mornings or Wednesday afternoons, all day Thursday and all day Friday. Nursery children who stay for a full day can either bring a packed lunch or they can have a school dinner for £2.05 per day.
The Reception children start their day at 8.55 am. Home time is 3.15 pm.
8.45am: Dancing, Register, Weekly Story & Phonics
9.45am: Free Flow – time to explore indoors and outdoors while we work with our friends
11.30am: Nursery Lunchtime and Reception Group Time
11.45am: Nursery Home Time and Reception Lunchtime
12.15pm: Dancing, Register & Weekly Story
12.45pm: Free Flow – time to explore indoors and outdoors while we work with our friends
2.30pm: Nursery: Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle, Songs, Rhymes and Review
2.30pm: Reception: Maths, Writing and Talk Time
3.15pm: Home Time for Nursery and Reception
Our Learning
You can find our more about Our Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework on our website. You can also find out more about our weekly activities on Twitter, Facebook or from our Weekly EYFS Newsletter. We have a personalised curriculum based on the assessment of each child’s learning. The children in the Early Years Unit learn indoors and outdoors through supported play and one to one work with an adult. We closely monitor the progress of each individual child to ensure they reach their full potential.
CPS long term curriculum plan EYFS
Phonics
We follow the DfE’s Letters and Sounds phonics programme at Collierley. We begin with our youngest children in Nursery who learn to hear and distinguish different sounds around them in Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds which provides them with a strong foundation for the more “formal” phonics sessions, beginning in the Autumn Term of the Reception year. Phonics is taught in small groups in the Early Years Unit for 20 minutes each morning. Phonics knowledge is consolidated throughout the day through the provision and adult support. In Phase 2 our Reception children begin to learn the letters and sounds they need to be able to read and write simple words. Phase 3 provides the longer vowel sounds, such as “ai, ee, igh, oa and oo”.
A guide for the correct pronunciation of the phonics sounds can be found here.
We use the actions from the Jolly Phonics programme to aid the teaching of phonics initially. A description of the actions can be found here.
Mathematics
Mathematical skills in Early Years can be developed in every area of provision. Each day the children take part in a more formal, short session where they sing number songs and learn about number sense. The children use Numicon to help them to develop their number skills and they look at one number each week from zero to twenty.
Forest School
Mrs. McGee runs Forest School in Early Years. Each child should take part in a block of Forest School sessions during their time in Early Years. We are very fortunate to have our own Forest School area within the school grounds. It is incredible to see the improvement in the confidence and skills of the children as a result of the Forest School sessions. They are able to take risks and explore in a safe environment under the guidance of highly skilled staff.
30 Hours Free Childcare
September 2017 saw the introduction of 30 hours free childcare for nursery aged children in eligible families. At Collierley we offer 30 hours over 5 days between 8.45/9.00am and 3.00/3.15pm, including lunch and allowing for our flexible dropping off and collection times.
We offer a maximum of thirteen 30 hour places, in addition to twenty six universal 15 hour places. The minimum number of hours we offer is 15 per child. This is to ensure full coverage of the EYFS curriculum and that children receive their full educational entitlement.
Fifteen hour places can be chosen from one of our four options and remain dependent on availability:
5 mornings
5 afternoons
2.5 days – Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings
2.5 days – Wednesday afternoons, Thursday, Friday
Parents should check their eligibility online at the Childcare Choices website: http://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk and they will then be directed to the digital childcare service to apply. They will be given an eligibility code. The code should be entered onto a form available from the school and returned to the office so that relevant checks can be made. This form will include consent for school to carry out the eligibility check.
Thank you for visiting our class page. If you have any questions or would like to find out more about our Nursery provision, please contact us via the school office or make an appointment to visit us.
