Reception Class (Foundation Stage)
The children start in our Foundation Stage at school aged 4 – 5. We aim to create a stimulating environment where children feel safe and happy to explore, try new activities and learn new concepts. We will plan high quality experiences to provide the children with a broad and balanced curriculum in order to stimulate their interest and engage them in fun activities that will enable your child to reach their full potential.
We recognise that this is a very important stage in your child’s life and it forms the foundations and prepares them for their future learning and successes. We aim to make your child’s early experiences of school as happy, active, fun and secure supporting their development, care and learning needs. We will do this by providing first hand experiences that encourage your child to learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development.
Our curriculum focuses initially on the 3 prime areas of learning as these are the most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Ensuring your child is confident and self-assured
- Managing their feelings and behaviour
- Making friends and developing social skills
- Being able to share and take turns
- Moving and using gross motor skills
- Developing fine motor skills
- Learning about healthy living
- Managing self-care independently
Communication and Language
- Listening and attention skills
- Understanding what people are saying
- Communicating with others
- Developing vocabulary and speech
As they then develop they will be encouraged to develop skills in 4 specific areas:
- Enjoying reading books
- Making marks and learning to write
- Starting to explore phonics and letter sounds
- Learning to count, recognising numbers and using them
- Calculating and solving problems
- Learning about shape and measures through play
Understanding the World
- Finding out about nature and the world around them
- Talking about people, their local community and similarities and differences
- Learning to use ICT equipment confidently
Expressive Arts and Design
- Learning to enjoy being creative
- Singing, dancing and making music
- Playing imaginatively
- Using colour to express themselves
We observe and assess your children during their play and plan stimulating activities that are meeting the needs of your child and ensuring we are constantly challenging and helping your child to succeed. Well planned play is essential to children’s learning and the indoor and outdoor classrooms are organised to give children plenty of room to move around, to work on their own and in groups and offer quality resources that engage your child in learning.
We recognise and value the importance of working closely with parents and the need for a close home-school partnership. We aim to develop good relationships by inviting you into school on a regular basis to share your knowledge of your child and to learn about what your child is doing in school, keeping you informed of their progress and successes. By sharing this information we can plan experiences and activities that will ensure your child will meet their full potential at our school.
Learning Key Stage 1 and 2
What will my child learn?
Key Stage 1 covers school Year 1 and Year 2 (ages 5 – 7)
Key Stage 2 includes Year 3 – 6 (ages 7 – 11).
We provide a rich, broad and creative curriculum, which connects all of the subjects in the National Curriculum and Religious Education in line with the Locally Agreed Syllabus.
We are a Church of England school, welcoming all children and their families. Our Church School Distinctiveness is one of our key drivers.
Children are assessed against progression indicators for all subjects. In addition to our internal teacher assessments, at the end of Years 2 and 6 the children sit the Government’s Statutory Attainments Tests (SATS) in Reading, Writing and Mathematics.
Reading, writing, speaking and listening are key skills for learning. Language development is one of our key drivers. In addition to Literacy and Language lessons, pupils are engaged in social learning activities and in drama lessons.
Reading is taught systematically to build up fluency and enjoyment. We use ‘Read Write, Inc’ to teach phonics (letter sounds) and early reading skills, which lead into our main Literacy programme. Children engage with a wide range of literature: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Handwriting skills are developed in every year group, starting with gross and fine motor skills activities in Foundation Stage, through basic letter formation in lower school and then onto a cursive (joined up) style using an ink pen.
The development of a neat and fluent handwriting style is an important element in other areas of writing. In every year group children are taught about and helped to practise a range of skills for writing in fictional genres and non-fiction styles.
There are three main aims in mathematics which apply at every stage of pupils’ learning.
- become fluent with numbers and be able to calculate quickly and efficiently using mathematical operations. The basic ones are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division;
- be able to reason mathematically – following a line of enquiry, identify relationships and explain their thinking using appropriate mathematical vocabulary;
- be able to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems.
At the start of each year, parents will be advised of the particular areas of maths and the skills which children will be learning.
We aim to help children acquire scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through biology, chemistry and physics. Where possible these will be developed within our exciting cross-curricular ‘connected’ curriculum although process skills (observing, interpreting data, hypothesizing) will be assessed discretely.
Children should be equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand, and question, the uses and implications of modern science.
D. Foundation Subjects
In every year children will learn skills in the following foundation subjects:Art & Design, Computing, Design & Technology, Geography, History, Modern Foreign Languages, Music and Physical Education.
E. Religious Education
Religious Education follows the Coventry Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education. At All Saints some aspects of Religious Education are taught through themes, e.g. Light, and are linked, where possible, to our Christian values. The aim of religious education is to provide opportunities for children to learn the beliefs and practices of the different religions in Britain with emphasis on Christianity as the major faith. However, children need to be prepared for the real world, which is multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-faith. We work hard to raise children’s awareness of the variety of the world’s cultural and religious traditions and encourage positive attitudes, values, expectations and genuine equality of opportunity for all. During their time in our school we aim for our children to make visits to places of worship of the major world faiths. In Key Stage One the customs and beliefs of two or more religions are compared. In Key Stage Two Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism are studied in a systematic way so that the children are able to understand the essential elements of these religions.