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), Mrs. Dower (Early Years Apprentice), Miss Edington (Early Years Teaching Assistant), Miss Nicholson (Early Years Teaching Assistant) and Miss Callender (Early Years Apprentice) also work with us. 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 weekly with activities and resources tailored to the children’s needs and interests. We plan carefully to ensure the children are continually learning through their play. Writing, reading and mathematical skills are planned into most areas of the unit each week wherever possible. 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.
We start the day with dancing in Early Years. This is followed by our weekly story and phonics. We use Letters & Sounds. After phonics, we have a lot of time to explore the classrooms and outdoor areas during the morning while we work with our friends and our Key Workers. At the end of the morning we talk together about what we have done before we get ready for lunch or home time. The afternoon session is very similar to the morning session but at the end of the day we do Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle, Magic Writing and Magic Maths just before home time.
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 @Collierlypri 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 a mix of direct group teaching, small group work, supported play and one to one work with an adult. We run specific, tailored intervention groups to ensure all of our children make rapid progress and achieve their potential. Current interventions are based around the Literacy and Mathematics areas of learning and include: phonics, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, super writers, number recognition and shape recognition. These groups are always very active and fun.
Phonics
We follow the government’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, although phonics teaching and learning is continuous 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 for a group of children each week. 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 during their six week block. 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.
Websites to support children’s learning
Sound Pronunciation Guide for Phonics
Let’s Celebrate (BBC CBeebies programme about different festivals)
Alphablocks (BBC CBeebies phonics programme with correct pronunciation of sounds)
Numberblocks (BBC CBeebies number programme)
Phonics Play (phonics games and resources)
Topmarks (lots of games to explore)
Thank you for visiting our part of the website. 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.
