Starting School - Early Years Foundation Stage Parents' Information

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Hello!

Welcome to St Mary's Fields Primary School. We are so excited that you have chosen our nursery and foundation stage unit for your child.

Our Intent

At St Mary’s Fields we promote communication and language, physical development and personal social and emotional development as the golden threads that are woven into our every day curriculum. Through our broad, balanced and flexible curriculum, we facilitate and unlock a world full of potential for our children. We effectively plan experiences and learning environments that meet the needs of all of our pupils and builds upon their interests and fascinations.

We treat every interaction as a positive opportunity to create a connection and shape a life. Through our focus observation and effective adult interaction we promote curiosity, independence, and enrich our children’s vocabulary; promoting exploration, learning and curiosity through play.

We provide a learning experience that is bespoke to St Mary's Fields and to every unique cohort, based on their needs identified at baseline, emerging trends and our continual gap analysis that supports our planning and provision.

Each child has their individual starting points which we value and recognise.

How we will implement our intention...

At St Mary’s Fields Primary School we prioritise creating a ‘language rich’ environment through the use of open ended provision indoor and outdoors, through songs, nursery rhymes, stories and providing time for quality interactions between adults and between peers. Trained staff ensure that interactions are positive and progressive, allowing children to flourish and gather words at pace in order to become confident communicators. Staff run effective communication programmes such as Talk Boost and NELI which enhance communication, vocabulary and expressive skills. Children are encouraged to become early readers through enjoyment of books and the systematic teaching of our KTC phonics programme..

We effectively plan and design an early year’s curriculum that not only meets the emerging needs of the children but also supports, extends and develops curiosity and engagement with learning. Long term planning is frequently improved to ensure that it is well sequenced and progressive. Our planning is responsive and flexible, ensuring that we cater to emerging needs, interests and fascinations. The curriculum is planned to ensure that the unique child is considered. The sequence of the curriculum builds on prior knowledge of the child from their nursery and home experiences.

Children learn number rhymes, stories and songs to develop their mathematical thinking through direct teaching and exploration. Our maths teaching is applied outside of the context of the maths lesson, such as when following a cooking recipe (measurement, capacity, number recognition etc.), tidying up, construction, role play and counting the daily dinner order for the school kitchen.

As we place a high priority on physical development, we have built our school provision to give children many opportunities to strengthen their core muscles through physical play and our Big Moves physical development intervention programme. The children spend time in our purpose built outdoor area to develop through wonder, exploration and sensory experiences in our forest area, mud kitchen, climbing equipment, garden and raised beds, large sandpit and water area.

At St Mary’s Fields we understand the importance of the parent partnership as part of the school community and the crucial role as part of their child’s learning journey.

We create that bond through our welcome to school meetings, home visits and stay and play sessions at the start of the school year. During the school year, parents receive updates through our online learning journey Tapestry and also receive Knowledge Organisers to inform them of what their child is learning, key vocabulary explained and how they can support learning at home.

As part of the learning and teaching process, children are assessed through a balance of observation during play, adult directed play and information from home. This is then used in conjunction with our new skills progression documents to help determine where the child is with their learning and at the end of the year in relation to the Early Learning Goals.

"Let the learning journey begin"

Mr Mc Farland

EYFS Leader

P.S. If you have not yet put your child's name on the waiting list for a Nursery Place (they will need to be 3 years old by the end of August) then you can click here to fill in the form