Early Years
Hello, my name is Mrs Roberts and I am the Early Years Team Leader at Sherdley Primary School.
I am an experienced teacher, and have taught at Sherdley since 2004. Throughout my teaching career I have had the opportunity to work in classes across Key Stage One and Two and have spent the past 12 years working Early Years, in both Pre-school and Reception. I work closely with our large Pre-School and Reception Teams and the EYFS governors.
At Sherdley Primary School we aim to give each child a happy, positive and enriching start to their school life where they can establish solid foundations in order to expand and foster a deep love of learning. Our Early Years Team values each child as a unique individual and is dedicated in preparing them socially, physically, intellectually and emotionally for their own learning journey. Opportunities to develop the children’s characteristics of learning are embedded throughout Reception and Pre-School as the children develop and learn in different ways both inside and outside the classroom.
Pre-School
Reception
Both Pre-School and Reception have their own designated outdoor area that they are able to access throughout the day.
Our curriculum within Pre-School and Reception follows both the DfE Statutory Framework for Early Years Foundation Stage and the Development Matters documents. These two documents underpin the planning, teaching, learning and assessment within the Early Years.
We deliver this curriculum through the use of carefully planned high quality texts providing a language-rich environment, that focuses on developing children’s oracy skills. We believe that from the start of Pre-School, children should have lots of opportunities to engage with books that foster their imagination and interest, as well as immerse them in a wide range of language. There is a designated book area within each of the classrooms in order to instill a love of books and reading.
The planning of for texts can be found on Pre-School and Reception’s classpages as they provide parents with an outline of the learning that their child will encounter in school as well as a range of ideas for activities and learning opportunities that their children can access at home. Alongside these plans staff have developed tiered vocabulary ladders to reflect the importance of communication and the development of language and vocabulary across the EYFS curriculum.
We have a Lending Library system within Pre-School and Reception. Every Friday each child is given the opportunity to choose a book for them to share at home with their parents. Through the use of a ‘Sharing Book Journal’ parents are able to record their child’s comments about the story.
Children choosing books from our lending library.
We teach children to read using the systematic and synthetic phonics programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Through this programme we start the teaching of phonics in Pre-school, where we follow the Rhyme Time and Foundations for Phonics programmes. Through this we develop the children’s ability to tune into and copy sounds and orally blend CVC words by the time they start Reception.
In Reception, the children start their phonics sessions after the introductory 2 weeks. We progress from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to 30 minutes lessons as quickly as possible. Children start to take home Little Wandle Learning to Read Books from the Autumn Half Term. We send home small phoneme/grapheme cards so parents can help with daily practice, and we update individual reading diaries with each child’s current level so parents can see how they are progressing.
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/: Early YearsAt Sherdley we believe that parents and carers are a child’s first educator and therefore work very closely to ensure they are involved in what we do with their child at school. This home/school relationship starts during our home visits and stay and play sessions as the child starts Pre-School and Reception. Throughout the year parents are invited to ‘Family Learning’ sessions and workshops relating to the curriculum. As a means of strengthening our communication links with home we upload photos onto the App every few days of our exciting activities. We provide parents with a weekly EYFS Newsletter with details of the content taught and experiences provided so that learning can be reinforced at home.
