Parents and Carers of children starting Reception in September 2022
Our Early Years
At Bowburn Primary School, we pride ourselves on how our Nursery and Reception classes form a cohesive Early Years department, ensuring that your child’s transition is seamless.
Our nursery is more than just childcare: one of our major benefits is the opportunity for children to progress into Reception class and continue on their educational journey with minimal disruption.
For children who are joining us from other nurseries, we work closely with your child’s nursery over the summer term to ensure that your child’s transition into school is as smooth as possible. We hope to achieve this by meeting your child in their nursery setting, talking to their key workers and also offering sessions where your child can come and visit our Reception class. If you have any concerns or questions about your child starting school, please ring and ask to speak to Mrs Claire Foster, who is our Early Years Lead.
At the core of our Early Years curriculum are the Characteristics of Effective Learning.
Characteristics of Effective Learning
Playing & Exploring
Children are encouraged to play with what they know and to develop the confidence to “have a go.”
We are committed to offering children an experience that will foster a love of learning within a safe and stimulating environment.
We build secure and trusting relationships which allow our children to flourish.
Active Learning
The indoor and outdoor environment is carefully resourced so that children become motivated to be independent learners.
Children are supported to become more resilient: to keep on trying and achieve what they set out to do.
Children become more engaged; showing high levels of energy and fascination.
Creating & thinking critically
As children engage in a broad range of activities in Early Years, they begin to actively think about the meaning of what they are doing.
Children will begin to generate new ideas, make links between experiences and learning and become problem solvers.
Play based approach to learning
The children will have the opportunity throughout their day to engage in play-based activities indoors and outdoors. They will have access to a variety of areas within the classroom where they can independently choose and lead their own learning. Play-based learning provides opportunities for children to actively and imaginatively engage with people, objects and the environment. Children are naturally motivated to play. Our play based curriculum builds on this motivation, using play as a context for learning. In this context, children can explore, experiment, discover and solve problems in an imaginative way.
Our play-based approach involves both child-initiated and teacher-supported learning. At Bowburn Primary, we encourage children’s learning and inquiry through interactions that aim to stretch their thinking to higher levels. Our aim is to have an environment that is welcoming, friendly, supportive and challenging. We wish for both you and your child to have a happy and confident beginning to their school life at Bowburn Primary School
Curriculum
The curriculum in the Foundation Stage is taught through the Early Learning Goals. Our EYFS area is a carefully planned and well-resourced environment that caters for the various needs of a young child. We offer a broad range of experiences for the early years, both indoors and outdoors. Our Early Years team plan a range of purposeful activities which inspire and engage children as well as match the different levels of need.
There are seven areas of learning that shape our educational programmes.
The 3 prime areas are:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Personal, social and emotional development
Children are also supported within the 4 specific areas of:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
Assessment
During the first few weeks in Nursery/ Reception, we will find out what the children already know and can do and use this information to help us develop an individual learning programme for each child.
Each child has their own electronic ‘Learning Portfolio’ based on Class Dojo, where we keep evidence of their learning through photographs and videos of what they have been doing. As this is web-based parents have full access to these from home. We want parents and carers to be involved fully to ensure we can gain a holistic view of each child, therefore, we ask parents/ carers to upload photos, videos and comments to their child’s portfolio.
During a typical week in Early Years, information, observations and work samples are gathered to support a judgement as to whether the child is working on, working towards achieving or has achieved targets that have been set for them. This can be in the form of targeted activities relating to the child’s target, modelling an activity within the areas, modelling how to use the different areas or what the children show during child-initiated activities.
Parents and carers will then be invited into school to discuss their child’s progress and targets. This cycle of assessment will take place at least once each term.
If you are interested in how you can help your child prepare for school, follow the link for a free course on preparing your child for school.
