Early Years at Shipton Bellinger Primary School
Early Years Vision Statement
Within early years at Shipton Bellinger Primary School, we believe that by learning and caring together, our children will grow and develop a strong sense of self, curiosity and community. Through our creative and inspiring learning landscape, children have the opportunity to explore, collaborate and communicate endless possibilities and ideas in order to build firm foundations for a life-long love of learning and self-development.
Characteristics of Effective Learning
~ Playing & Exploring ~ Active learning ~ Creating & Thinking Critically ~
Our intent
To help children feel happy, safe and valued in order to be able to actively engage in the learning process through their development of the characteristics of effective learning.
To help our children grow in their self-esteem and confidence by facilitating and directly teaching them the skills to lead their own learning through play; exploration, observation and asking questions about the world around them.
To provide rich experiences and learning opportunities that stimulate language, curiosity, awe and wonder.
To facilitate each child in working towards their own goals; through encouragement and high expectations, helping them to grow as rounded individuals; socially, physically, intellectually and emotionally.
To empower our children with a framework for positive mental well-being through enabling them to develop and grow in their capacity for self-regulation and resilience within a caring, secure and fully inclusive environment, based on values of respect, perseverance and collaboration.
To help each child to recognise their own strengths, talents and potential, through experiencing success and developing the confidence to take risks and accept mistakes as a normal part of the learning journey.
To develop and maintain positive relationships with parents, carers and families as well as the wider village community, in order to build a strong ethos of learning and caring together in partnership.
To provide a broad, balanced, relevant and creative curriculum that will provide the foundations of skills, knowledge and cultural capital to open many doors of opportunity for our children.
Our Curriculum
Our curriculum reflects the 'Educational Programmes' and 'Areas of Learning' identified in the government’s Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. This is supported through the 'Development Matters' (Non-statutory curriculum) guidance published by the DfE, based on the revised EYFS statutory framework (2021). Our Curriculum also reflect our school values and 'Golden Threads' of: 'Our Community' ~ collaboration, 'Our Heroes' ~ perseverance and 'Our Diverse World' ~ respect.
We provide our children with a broad and stimulating range of experiences, appropriate to their stage of development, and we ensure full coverage of the Educational Programmes. A careful balance between child-initiated and adult-led learning opportunities is planned for, and in response to children’s interests and needs, in order that they have the best opportunity to achieve a ‘good level of development’ (GLD) at the end of the year. Our Reception children also take part in daily phonics sessions. We follow the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ DfE validated Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme.
Home-School Partnership
We believe that parents and carers are our partners in children’s learning. We aim to develop a close working relationship between home and school that involves parents in their child’s development as much as possible. We do this by:
- Holding a 'Welcome to Shipton' New Parent Information Meeting after school places have been accepted
- Offering a comprehensive transition programme to support parent and child as they get ready for starting school
- Adopting an open door policy that encourages parents and carers to bring any concerns or issues to us;
- Holding two parents’ evenings during the year
- Providing a written report at the end of the year
- Providing weekly class news (via Tapestry) and regular whole-school newsletters.
- Sharing observations of children’s learning through their online learning journal (Tapestry)
- Providing a ‘Walk n Talk’ board for daily talk points (for parents & children to share)
Starting School
Children start school with us in the September following their fourth birthday. We aim to make the transition from their pre-school setting as smooth as possible for both parents and children. This includes:
- Visits, contact and discussion with pre-school and other early years settings by our Early Years Leader.
- Information-sharing and transition sessions ('Caterpillar Club') for children and their parents in the summer prior to starting school.
- Effective transfer of documents and information.
- Family Contact calls within the first week of autumn term
- Graduated settling-in period during first week of term, with children being in full-time attendance by their second week at school
- Completion of the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) as per government guidance.
Please refer to our separate Early Years Foundation Stage Induction Policy for more specific transition information.
