The Reception Year in the Vale Infants’ School is designed to provide our pupils with a broad range of experiences enabling them to develop as well rounded individuals who are self aware and gain skills that will enable them to fulfil their potential during their learning journey with us.

 We work hard to make your child’s first year at school enjoyable and to help them settle into the school routine and make friends.

We believe in the importance of learning through play. 

The planning in our Foundation Stage department, (the Reception Year) is based on a child-centred approach to learning where children learn through play.  We start from your child and their interests.  We believe that it is productive to ask the children what they want to learn about a particular theme and how they want to learn about it. 

We, (all the adults present in the foundation stage setting: both teachers and teaching assistants) are here to facilitate your child’s learning and enable them to develop skills which they will be able to use throughout their school life. 

Our planning ensures that our pupils learn through  purposeful well-planned play.  We encourage our pupils to be both cognitively and physically active in order to make sense of the world around them and make their learning as active as possible.

We know that children need lots of experiences and the opportunity to learn in lots of different ways.  They need to use all of their senses as they explore,  discover and apply new knowledge to what they already know.  By making sure your child’s experiences in school are active we have found that our pupils make good progress, are engaged in their learning and show greater understanding.  An active style of learning also leads to fewer behaviour problems and works well particularly for boys.

Active learning is learning which engages children’s thinking using real-life and imaginary situations.  Active learning can be spontaneous play; planned, purposeful play; investigating and exploring experiences; events and life experiences and focused learning and teaching. It is practical and hands-on.

Young children need space to move about in order to be active in their learning.  They benefit from opportunities to learn inside and outside.  They needs places where they can learn as individuals, in pairs and in groups.

Designing our environment involves us observing the children and adapting it to fulfil their needs.  Children’s enthusiasm is generated when spaces and resources are changed to reflect their current interests.  By asking the children what interests them and involving them in decision making we help to give them some ownership and encourage them to respect the resources.

EATING FRUIT

We have a fruit scheme in Reception and at playtime, (or before playtime in the autumn Term) the children in Reception eat a selection of fruits, (always apples and bananas with other fruits added for variety).  Each half-term we ask parents to pay £1 per week for fruit.  Introducing eating fruit in school this way teaches the children the importance of keeping healthy and eating a healthy diet as part of that.  In the autumn term our fruit breaks are social times when we sit with our friends and talk while we eat our fruit.

SPECIAL PERSON

Every week we choose a special person at random from a box.  Our special person does lots of special jobs for us including collecting the register from the office.  The special person always goes at the front of the line.  The special person can bring in their favourite toy and their favourite book to show the class. On Friday the special person from each class makes biscuits to take home.

Year Reception

This page will be updated soon for our new intake September 2011

The children in Year Reception follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS).

A link to the UK Governments website and the EYFS can be found below:

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/eyfs

There are six areas of learning and development in the Foundation Stage Curriculum:  Communication, Language and Literacy (CLL); Creative Development (CD); Knowledge and Understanding of the World (KUW);  Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy (PRSN); Physical Development (PD) and Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED). (All areas of learning and development are connected to one another and are of equal importance).

We plan our learning in 3 categories: Directed, Enhanced Provision and Continuous Provision as shown below in the diagram

Directed Activities

The directed activities are those led by the adults in the setting.  Most of the directed activities start with a teacher-led lesson on the carpet.  Directed activities can be individual, group or whole class.  We plan lessons in sequences for all our subjects and this teaching is formal although activities are frequently practical and play based.  We strongly believe learning should be fun in order to be effective.  We want the children to be motivated to learn and enjoy their learning. 

Continuous Provision and Enhanced Provision

As different children have different needs at different times we aim to provide a rich variety of continuous provision that will enable the children to make choices based on their own individual interests and needs.  We plan for “continuous provision” that is the resources and activities available for the children to choose, use and put away during the year and “enhanced provision” those activities and resources that we specifically select to enhance the continuous provision, provide the children with new and interesting choices; to further their learning in and understanding of aspects of the curriculum and to engage them in learning and to introduce them to new possibilities.

Continuous provision provides plenty of opportunities for children to plan for their own learning and learn problem solving and decision making skills.  Our open plan learning environment will help to facilitate this.  The children will be free to choose the resources they need and as the year progresses and they become more skilled at planning their own activities the children will be free to transport the resources between areas to extend their play as long as they respect these and return them to their original places when they have finished for others to use.  This will enrich the children’s experiences further and allow them to make connections across different curriculum areas. 

Using continuous and enhanced provision will help our pupils to: