Early Years Foundation Stage

At St. Andrews we have a Nursery class for children aged 3-4 in addition to our Reception provision (the year in which most children begin school).  Our Nursery class is led by Mrs Poppy.  She runs a fabulous team, all of whom are very experienced in EYFS.  Our Reception class is taught by Mrs Ruddock and Mrs Gordon. Our Reception/Year 1 class is taught by Mrs Jackson. All of our EYFS teachers are experienced in Early Years and Key Stages 1 and 2.  We are fortunate to be supported by excellent and experienced teaching assistants; Miss Hornsey, Miss Cook and Miss Chamberlain in Reception and Mrs Prissick and Miss Cooke in Nursery. 

Our Foundation Stage unit work together and have developed a long term plan of different themes to base our learning upon.  However we also plan in response to the children's needs and interests and for this reason the themes we follow may vary from year to year.  As a church school however we always include teaching of key Christian celebrations such as Christmas and Easter. 

We strive to ensure we are covering all seven areas of learning in EYFS in an interesting and varied way.  Our class knowledge organisers and communication in school planners let parents and carers know the learning experiences we are providing.  We enjoy offering exciting ways to supplement our teaching too such as a visiting planetarium, school trips and visiting minibeasts!  We are always grateful to parents and carers for their support on such occasions. 

We use 'Essential Letters and Sounds' as our phonics scheme in school.  We are fortunate to have a wide range of phonic based reading books to support learning at home and school.  Reading books are sent home in line with our phonics teaching to promote independent reading, fluency and comprehension.  Children in both Nursery and Reception may also take home a non-scheme book to share from our Infant Library.  

With our mathematics teaching, we use appropriate resources from NCETM, Master the Curriculum and White Rose.

Our EYFS teachers work closely with our Key Stage One colleagues to ensure appropriate challenge for those children who exceed the expected level of EYFS. 

As a Foundation Stage we are also extremely fortunate to have two fantastic outdoor classrooms just for us!  The Nursery outdoor classroom has a super tee-pee and space for games as well as a mini garden and the Reception outdoor classroom has a large canopy area as well as a trim trail, pirate ship, beautiful trees and plenty of space for den building, role play and outdoor writing to name just a few of the fun things we get up to out there!

Our pupil premium children of course benefit from the extra resources brought in to support them and our forces children love sending bluey e-mails to their parents to keep them up to date with their busy school lives when they are away on attachments. 

Our Reception class also enjoy the swimming lessons we can offer at Jubilee Park.

If you would like to know more or visit our school, please contact the school office. 

Please click on the link below to see what is happening in our Early Years classrooms :

If your child is staring school in September, you may wish to look at the Louis book with your child.