Drighlington Primary School

Early Years

Intent

In our Early Years classrooms we offer a welcoming, safe and happy environment. Children thrive through child-led play, developing skills and knowledge to support their learning journeys. Our classrooms inspire imagination, language development and creativity with challenge to promote independence and resilience. In partnership with families, we prepare nurture and support children to achieve the readiness they need for the next steps in their school lives.

We want our children to be inspired and motivated to learn more about themselves and the world around them in a caring, engaging and supportive environment. We aim to provide a carefully planned, structured and monitored, child-initiated and adult-led curriculum that enables each child to develop maximum levels of self-confidence, self-motivation, and resilience whilst learning positively, happily and collaboratively with others. Our school culture of high expectations for learning and behaviour is introduced in Nursery and continues through to Year Six with all children forming part of a successful, hard working school community. We believe that every child should have the opportunity and be encouraged to reach their potential.

Implementation

We have a rigorous approach to teaching and acquisition of phonics with daily lessons, using Read, Write, Inc approaches. Language development is based around three aspects: listening and attention, understanding and speaking. Children have opportunities to experience a rich language environment, to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves and to speak and listen in a range of situations. Adults skilfully play alongside children ensuring progress through higher level questioning and support and a wide variety of teaching approaches are used to support, encourage and challenge children in their learning. Children start their reading journey on wordless picture books before moving onto phonically decodable books and they read a variety of texts. Mark making and writing are essential skills that are fun and exciting; children use different materials and media to express themselves through art, design, drama, music, movement and dance. For mathematics, White Rose maths hub resources, daily counting and number songs all support the adult led sessions which are then extended through areas of provision, both indoors and outdoors, providing daily problem solving play activities. There are ongoing opportunities for children to be active as well as develop their co-ordination, control and movement.

We use floor books to teach all areas of the EYFS curriculum in an exciting and interactive way. The floor books also provide an evidence base of milestones in achievement which teachers can use to evaluate summative levels. Children develop a positive sense of themselves and others. They are supported to form positive relationships and have respect for others.

Impact

The first years at Drighlington Primary School are fun, exciting and full of special moments. Children learn to be resilient, thoughtful learners that challenge themselves, problem solve, negotiate and communicate with one another. An engaging, safe and positive environment allows children to thrive academically, personally and socially. Relationships with each other are of the upmost importance and children learn to share experiences positively and confidently ensuring strong and healthy bonds throughout their time at Drighlington Primary School.

Our children engage in a stimulating curriculum that ensures that all seven areas of learning and development are addressed, with the knowledge that securing the essential skills of reading, writing and mathematics enables successful learning across all other subjects. Partnership with families is an essential aspect of our provision and we value their feedback and support and do all that we can to give guidance for home learning, through play.

Drighlington Primary School Provision

Children’s learning is through core and enhanced provision in both the indoors and outdoors environments. We strive to encompass a range of curriculum subjects into each topic, making them relevant and meaningful for our children. We foster and value the children’s curiosity and independence which encourages engagement and active learning.

We use a number of different approaches to explore and deliver the topics to ensure we enable our children to develop all the skills they need to be confident and successful learners. All our children are involved in the planning stage of new topics as we value their ideas and contributions; we believe that children learn best when they are able to steer and direct their own learning. The children are encouraged to be creative and express their creativity through many and varied opportunities which include sewing, pottery, role play, painting, model making, singing and dancing.

Positive Relationships

We value the positive relationships we have with parents and carers and constantly strive to improve this. We encourage parents to be involved in their child’s learning and we support this through workshops during the year. For reception children, we send reading books home each night along with sounds and tricky words to practise. In nursery, each child has a Home/School book which can be used to share many important or special events in your child’s life for example:

Personal achievements such as swimming badges or riding their bike
A special event such as a party for a relative
Important milestones including a new tooth or a birthday
An activity you have taken part in, perhaps a visit to the cinema or to a friend’s house to play
Photographs, drawings, computer printouts, writing

These events are important in a child’s life and we value the opportunity to share them with children in school. We are able to talk to children about these events, which we use to build our relationships and to show we value their life experiences. The children enjoy talking about themselves which builds their communication skills and their self-confidence.

We take every opportunity to share with parents and friends the exciting learning the children have experienced. Assemblies are held every half term and include such topics as harvest, Christmas Nativity, Chinese New Year and Celebrating people who are special to us.

Throughout the year the children have the opportunity to welcome visitors into school and visit places of interest which may be walking to the local shops to buy pancake ingredients, posting a letter or visiting the local church. We believe these experiences help the children to understand the world in which they live.

How you can help your child at home

Partnerships with parents and carers is an important part of Drighlington Primary School. Working closely with parents enables us to ensure parents feel confident that their child is safe, well looked and is receiving a high quality education during their school hours. There is an on- line learning journey called Tapestry, that allows practitioners and parents to communicate with each other on a regular basis. Parents are able to share home experiences by uploading pictures and sharing activities. It is a privilege to be able to see the children and their experiences out of school. The links below offer a range of resources that may also be useful to families.

Nursery Rhyme Booklet

Making their mark - children's early writing.pdf

Our cursive handwriting order of teaching

Read, Write, Inc Phonics Guide for Parents

Oxford Owl guide for Parents

Is Your Child Struggling to Read?

Floor book principles - our star ideas July 2021.docx

Maths Guide for Parents and Carers

Hungry Little Minds

50 things to do before you are 5

Parent and Carer guide to Tapestry

Tapestry Parent Registration Form