Early Years

Developing an enthusiasm for learning

What makes FPLS Nursery unique

Fairfield Park Lower School offers a school run Nursery for 3 and 4 year olds at both the Dickens Boulevard site and Ruskin drive site. Our Nursery classes are warm, friendly, inviting place for parents and carers too, where we work together in partnership - valuing your primary role in knowing, understanding and teaching your child.

Each class has a class teacher who works as part of a dedicated team of well qualified practitioners who are also paediatric first aid trained. We work together as a team across both sites to ensure your child has the best start to their educational journey from an early age.

A dedicated Assistant Head for Early Years works with all staff to monitor standards, deliver training, oversees outstanding quality of teaching and learning as well as delivering a bespoke curriculum that enhances each child’s character.

As we are part of the main school we are lucky enough to participate in all whole school events such as carnivals, Jubilees, coronations, project weeks such as celebrating 100 years of Disney, Christmas concerts, stay and play sessions, coffee mornings to name just a few.

Our Nursery Vision and Aims

At FPLS Nursery, we provide a happy, caring, stimulating environment where your child feels secure and can learn at his/her own pace. We value all our children equally and aim for each child to make maximum progress. We know that children learn best when they feel happy and secure and because of this we place great emphasis on developing your child's self-confidence and self-esteem.

We believe that education is about developing each child’s potential through an enjoyable enquiry-based learning approach, which builds on the child’s natural curiosity and interests. New knowledge is introduced through explicit teaching and we follow this up with practice and application. We learn through play, enhanced by skilful adult involvement and interactions to move learning forward. Scaffold learning opportunities in the provision, curriculum and environment are key to progress of every unique child.

We aim:

to ensure children are caring, kind and respectful to those around them following our school values
to give children opportunities to be curious, make good progress and enjoy their learning and make it memorable
to take into account what children already know and can do in order to build our curriculum
to ensure children’s play is valued and used to teach many aspects of the curriculum
to engage parents in their child’s education and work in dual partnership to ensure a positive experience
to encourage each child has good dispositions and attitudes to learning so they are ready for the next step in their education journey into main school (Reception year)

Our Values

We start our Values Education with our youngest learners from Nursery to Year 4. Each month, we focus on a different value as part of our Values Education. A Values-based approach encourages reflective and aspirational attributes and attitudes.

Our learning style in Nursery

Is through a holistic approach based on the Four Principles of the EYFS Curriculum:

A Unique Child:

On entry to our setting, we liaise with parents to understand each child’s needs and interests and discover where they are in their development. We will then ensure our inclusive, provision supports their areas of interest and style of learning, enabling them to consolidate, widen and deepen their knowledge to ensure they meet the next steps in their educational journey.

Positive Relationships:

Through a range of transition events, we ensure children quickly settle into their new class, becoming familiar with their new routine and environment, staff and their peers. Through our values ethos, they feel secure at school, develop friendships and begin to understand their feelings and we share our expectations for behaviour and respect.

Enabling Environments:

We very much value the importance of learning both outside and indoors and cover all of the areas of the curriculum in both. Our environment is safe and stimulating with staff ensuring it supports and extends children’s learning through their play, exploring new challenges, accessing a wide range of resources to develop their interests with the encouragement of skilled practitioners.

Learning and Development:

At FPLS, the EYFS curriculum is delivered through a half termly topic to ensure a common thread links the children’s learning and captures their interests and desire to learn and to then share that learning with others. We recognise the changing needs and interests of our pupils and are responsive to this by regularly developing existing topics.

We use core texts as a basis for topic planning and begin each week known as ‘Story of the week’ across the EYFS. Using an exciting hook to engage children in both the topic and the book, promoting reading for pleasure along with comprehension and questioning skills. It supports communication and language, develops key vocabulary and promotes a love of reading.

Phonics and Early Literacy is taught through regular active sessions based on the Twinkl scheme of work, starting in our nursery with listening to sounds in the environment and progressing to hearing the initials sounds in a word, then recognising some graphemes. Then in reception we continue this program, supporting the children in becoming early readers and writers through a range of engaging and meaningful activities.

Maths is taught through carefully planned sessions using concrete resources and building on prior learning and real life experiences. This starts with mastering numbers 0-5 and then progresses through to 0-10 and 0- 20. We want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real life experiences.

Effective feedback and interactions, support a ‘have a go’ attitude to learning. We move the children on in their learning by closing gaps and addressing next steps in the moment so there is no loss of learning time. We share the children’s learning journey through the Evidence Me app to parents and carers.

During any session there is a balance of adult led and child initiated learning. Staff plan a range of activities to cover all areas of the curriculum providing activities that enhance children’s learning and impact on progress.

Communication

Communication is key as we pride ourselves in working with our parents to build relationships in order to give the children the best start to their educational journey.

Ways in which we communicate include:

- Open door policy – talk to us at anytime
- Weekly newsletter
- Dedicated area on school website
- Stay and play sessions
- Coffee mornings
- Gaining feedback through google forms and listening and acting upon parent’s views
- Evidence me Learning Journey platform to showcase your child’s learning
- Inclusion mornings
- Workshops about the curriculum
- Tours
- Parents evenings
- We are also open to ideas of what you can offer us too