Reception

Welcome to the new Early Years Foundation Stage page. This is where you will be able to find lots of useful information about our EYFS at Spurcroft Primary School.

Mrs Rhian Davey, School Leadership Team

Our Vision for Early Years

In the Early Years at Spurcroft Primary School our children are happy.  They are excited and motivated to learn through our rich and challenging learning experiences and by offering opportunities to explore, take risks and enjoy first-hand experiences.

We have high ambitions for all our children and recognise that children have different starting points to their learning. We plan according to children’s stage of development so all can thrive and develop. We aim for children to be well-rounded individuals who are independent, resilient and confident in themselves and with others.

Every day, we provide opportunities for children to come together to share their experiences and to learn lifelong skills through active learning. Our children are happy, proud and feel secure knowing that we celebrate their successes and value their achievements. The curriculum is centred around children’s interests with a balance of child-initiated and adult-led learning.

Our learning environment facilitates child-initiated play and provides children with carefully planned opportunities which allow them to explore, create and learn through exciting, stimulating, interactive and accessible resources.

Additionally, the children have an opportunity to learn through the outdoor environment in our extensive outdoor learning areas, encouraging them to learn in different ways and on different scales, have first-have experience with the natural world and to become physically active.

The role of the practitioner is vital in Early Years, where play-based and child centred learning is at the heart of our practice. The practitioners develop a personal, trusting relationship with each child, enabling them to support their learning journey and their development throughout their time in Early Years.

Routines and Organisation

F1 (Nursery) children attend either morning, afternoon sessions or full time sessions. Throughout their time in Nursery, practitioners support children's develop of communication and language and personal and social skills as well as promoting early phonics, fine motor skills and early maths skills.

F2 (Reception) children participate in daily lessons, which focus on developing knowledge in the Foundation subjects as well as promoting speaking and listening skills , cooperation and concentration. Daily Maths lessons enable children to develop a good knowledge of the number system, including counting, number recognition and addition and subtraction. Each day there are Phonics and reading sessions, that support children's progress to hear, identify and use sounds to read and write words and simple sentences. 

Our Early Years Classes:

Learning

In the Early Years children are taught through themes, enabling them to build up their knowledge within the Foundation Subjects . Children learn through a range of play-based opportunities as well as adult led and independent tasks. The EYFS curriculum promotes independence, communication, self-confidence, determination and the ability to think critically and share children’s thoughts and ideas. The children have independent access to a stimulating environment both indoors and outdoors on a daily basis.

This term our teaching themes are; Summer, People Who Help Us, The Rainforest, Transition

PE Kits

This term we would like the children to wear PE kits for our PE lessons and we ask that they come into school in their PE kits on this day. 

PE Days will be every Wednesday.

 Our PE kit consists of a white t-shirt with or without the school logo, black or navy shorts and trainers that the children can get on and remove themselves. In the colder months children can wear plain, dark tracksuit bottoms and a plain tracksuit top or the school jumper.

In Reception (F2), formal PE lessons will begin from January. Please start to send your child into school in their PE kit on a Wednesday in the Spring Term. 

Read, Write, Inc

To teach the children to read and write, we follow a phonics scheme called 'Read, Write, Inc' 

Read Write Inc. Phonics is a DfE-validated systematic synthetic phonics programme with a wholes chool approach to teaching early reading and writing, designed to ensure progress for every child. .

Children learn to read sounds and blend them into words. They apply this phonic knowledge to read and comprehend Storybooks that are carefully matched to the sounds they know. Children learn to read these books with a storyteller’s voice.

The aim of Read Write Inc. Phonics is for children to learn to read early. By the end of term 2 in Year 2 children are able to read stories at over 100 words per minute

While your children are learning to read, they work in progress groups to master each level of phonics and reading. The reading leader assesses and re-groups children every half-term. This allows  children to whisk through the phonic stages as quickly as possible.

Children work in progress group for one hour each day. This means they are learning at their ‘challenge’ level for five hours a week. (Reception children build up to this throughout the year).

In September children will begin by learning one sound to match each letter of the alphabet. When they know these, they will move on to learning more sounds, made up of 2 or 3 letters, which we call 'Special Friends'. These sounds will be their main tool for learning to read and write. 

Home-School Learning

In the Early Years, we set home learning tasks to support the children in consolidating the learning that we have done at school during the week and to enable parents to be part of their child’s learning journey

Home school learning in EYFS consists of:

'Book Bag Books' and Storybooks – Children will begin bringing home 'Book Bag Books' to read at home when they can confidently blend sounds together (e.g. c-a-t - cat). We change the 'Book Bag Books' every 3 days and ask children to share their book with an adult at home on a daily basis for at least 5 minutes.

'Book Bag Books' match the children's phonics level and contain words made up of sounds that the children know. They will be able to recognise the sounds independently and blend them together to read the whole word. This will develop the children's fluency and accuracy in reading.

Tapestry Tuesday – As part of developing children’s speaking and listening skills and their confidence, we set practical, skill based weekly tasks for the children to complete at home. We ask parents to upload the children completing these tasks on our online Tapestry Journal so that we can share these with the class. Every Tuesday we will look at what the children have done and enable some children to talk to the class about this.