| Teacher | Teaching Assistants |
| Helen Steele | Natalie Williams |
| Carenza Semmens-Waite | |
| Clare Sweeney | |
| Claire Vickery (on maternity leave) | |
|
Laura Walsh
|
The unit is staffed by specially trained Foundation Stage teacher and support staff and we are very lucky to have two, well-resourced classrooms (Green Room and Blue Room) as well as a covered outside area that can be accessed in all weathers. We have a large garden that is available to the children throughout the day and offers opportunities for nature investigations, sand, digging, water play, building, imaginative play and more!
We are a happy team who love to engage the children in investigating, exploring and developing learning both inside the classroom and out. We believe that it is important that our youngest children are encouraged to learn in an environment that enables them to make choices and to assume responsibility for their learning by following their interests and enthusiasms. The reception age children and nursery children work closely together, supporting each others learning adventures.
The Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework is used to support an integrated approach to the learning, development and care of the children. In FSU the three prime areas of learning are:
We place great emphasis on these three areas as it is important that we ignite our children’s curiosity, encourage their enthusiasms and build their capacity to learn, to form relationships and to thrive.
These three prime areas are strengthened and applied through the four specific areas of:
The children in FSU follow a daily routine which allows adults to plan learning opportunities that best meet the needs of the children and that focus on the basic skills of reading, writing and number work.
Phonics - the teaching of letter sounds to read and to write - is taught daily. Children are explicitly taught the skills of blending (putting the letter sounds together to read words) and of segmenting (separating letter sounds to spell). A short adult led session is taught daily using Read Write Inc resources.
We value parents as partners and emphasise the importance of home and school working together. As well as occasional topic linked home/school projects we would like you to spend 5 - 10mins sharing a book with your child every day.
Spring Term 23
As we move through Winter and into Spring, we will continue to observe the seasonal changes in the garden and will be spending as much time outdoors as we can! Hopefully the daffodils bulbs we planted as well as the trees that lost their leaves in Autumn will soon start to shoot!
This half term we will be learning about Antarctica and the Arctic....who else lives at the North Pole with Father Christmas? Where do penguins live? How many different types of penguins are there? How do the animals keep warm in the frozen sea? What can we do to protect the North and South Pole? During the first half of term, we will be using the books 'Lost and Found' by Oliver Jeffers and 'Antarctica' by Helen Cowcher.
The classrooms will be transformed into a chiily, snowy landscape with a polar explorers hut in the role play area.
We will also be using several non-fiction texts to help us find out more about the animals and birds that live at the North and South Pole.