Welcome to Foundation
Welcome to Foundation Stage. The EYFS staff work as a team and the children work with all of the staff. The Foundation Stage staff are Mrs Glover, Mrs Steele, Mrs Foster, Miss Spencer and Mrs Socorro. All of the children have a key worker and this is who parents and carers meet with at parents meetings. Teaching and learning follows the EYFS curriculum.
All children have the opportunity to work inside both classrooms and outside during the day. Learning is based around different themes and children enjoy finding out about the world around them. We engage and interest the children through different hooks for learning to make learning exciting. These are usually linked to our class book which cover all seven areas of learning which are; communication and language, personal, social and emotional development, physical development, Literacy, Mathematics, understanding the world and expressive arts and design.
During the year the children go out of school on school trips. For example this year we have been to The Lowry to watch a production of ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. We have also been on a trip to our local Chinese restaurant to find out about Chinese New Year.
During the spring and summer terms the children take part in forest school where they experience learning in the outdoor environment.
Homework
Each week children bring home their ‘Our News, Your News’ book. News books inform parents of what the children have been learning that week and provide the opportunity for children to share what they have been doing at home with school. We also send home packs to support our phonics teaching such as grapheme flash cards and tricky words.
Reading
Each week children have three reading practice sessions with a teacher. Their first read is to decode, the second is to read with fluency and expression (prosody) and the third is to discuss the book and answer comprehension based questions.
Each week children will bring a book home to read, this is the book they have read at school during that week and they should feel confident in reading this book. Once the children have the skills to read, they will be sent an additional reading book to share at home that is matched to their reading level. The children will also be sent home with a library book to share as a family.
Phonics
At St Wilfrid’s we follow the Little Wandle phonics scheme. The children are taught phonics every day, parents are informed about which sounds we have been learning in their ‘our news’ books.
We follow the Little Wandle handwriting formation. We teach rhymes that support the children with their recall of what each letter looks like.
Each day we have ‘rhyme time’ where we focus on a rhyme or poem of the week.
Writing
We follow the EY2P scheme. The children are encouraged to write purposeful messages to different characters, facts about animals in the world around us. We teach the children to talk through their sentence and count how many words they will write before they start to write. Once they have written they then read back their writing to check it makes sense. We teach the children to use finger spaces, full stops and capital letters.
Pencil grip
We encourage the children to use a tripod grip when holding their pencil. We have activities each day that support the development of their fine motor control eg using tweezers, dough tools, threading, scrunching paper, ripping paper, paint rollers, peg boards, clothes pegs, fishing games etc.
Maths
In Foundation Stage we have a hands on approach to Maths and children work practically to help make sense of number and numerical patterns. We follow the Mastering Number scheme and White Rose for shape, space and measures.
Children take part in a taught maths lesson daily and are given opportunities to apply their skills during independent learning as well as focus activities with the teacher each week.
Support at Home
There are lots of things that parents and carers can do at home to support their child such as the following; playing games and taking turns, reading different types of books, encouraging their child to be aware of print and numbers in the environment such as numbers on doors or signs, developing fine and gross motor control, e.g. using playdough, chunky chalks, ball games, painting with water, going on wildlife walks, observing seasonal changes, singing songs and nursery rhymes, talking together.
Useful Websites
Alphablocks – (Cbeebies)
Numberblocks – (Cbeebies)
