Early Years
Hello, my name is Mrs Baxter and I am the Early Years Team Leader at Sherdley Primary School. I am also the Phonics Lead and Pre-School teacher. I am an experienced teacher, and have taught at Sherdley since 1999. Throughout my teaching career I have had the opportunity to work in classes across Key Stage One and have spent the past 20 years working in Reception. I work closely with our Pre-School and Reception staff and the EYFS governors, one of our EYFS governors Mrs Tilley has worked alongside me in Reception for many years.
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.
Pre-School’s Autumn Texts
Reception’s Autumn Texts
The planning of these 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.
This year we have introduced 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.
Nursery rhymes are also an extremely important part of our curriculum within the Early Years. They are a great way for children to be introduced to the concept of rhythm and rhyming words. When listening to and joining in with nursery rhymes, children are developing their auditory discrimination skills; they are listening for words which have similar patterns to them. This then helps them later on at school, where they will use their knowledge of rhyme patterns in words to support their understanding of phonemes in reading and writing.
At 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 provide parents with weekly newsletters that are sent out via our parents app and can be found on both Pre-School and Reception’s classpages.
