Welcome to Class 1
Hello and a very warm welcome from Class One! We are a Foundation Stage class made up of Nursery and Reception children. Our teacher is Mrs Becky Johns and we have three other staff members who work across the week; Miss Kathryn Humphries, Mrs Claire Griffin and Mrs Gaby Hunt.
We are lucky to have a fantastic classroom space enabling us to explore and learn through our play. Our environment evolves and develops alongside the children's interests to ensure we are happy, confident and curious learners. Playful learning experiences are planned at key times of the day which help us to expand and consolidate our knowledge. In school we support all our children to develop their skills in becoming curious, independent, resilient, collaborative and reflective in all they do (our five key learning dispositions). Our children are encouraged to see mistakes as opportunities to learn and to thrive when challenged.
We see the environment for learning, as being within our school building, but also within our school site, our local area of North Petherwin as well as Launceston and beyond. We strive to provide children with many opportunities to learn and engage with our community.
Our Learning
We use the children's interests as well as seasonal changes, stories, celebrations and events to guide any themes we want to pursue. Your child will engage in a variety of different learning experiences, that they will explore through enrichments and hands on learning. Each learning experience will start by igniting the children's curiosity using high quality, hand picked texts, which will lead to purposeful, memorable outcomes. We have thought carefully about the skills and knowledge we want the children to develop in both nursery and reception and you can look at this more closely by viewing our Curriculum Goals, Long Term Curriculum Plans and Knowledge and Skills Organisers below.
Further information about the Early Years Foundation stage curriculum can be found under Curriculum: EYFS
Class Dojo
We use Class Dojo as our main communication platform between school and home, engaging with private messages, class/whole-school stories and sharing our learning through personal portfolios.
Parents will receive an invitation, via email, to join your child's assigned class once they are enrolled at our school.
Rainbows Curriculm Information
Sunbeams Nursery
We offer friendly and high quality early years education and play experiences for children aged 2 to 5 years.
Session Times
The Nursery is open 3 days per week during the term-time only
Sessions are available 8.45am-3:30pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Children are eligible for up to 15 Hours Free Government Funding the term after their 3rd Birthday.
(Parent's who work over 16 hours a week may be eligible for 30 hours funding)
Funding is also available for some 2 year olds (please enquire about eligibility criteria).
Children staying for lunch can either bring in their own packed lunch or have a paid hot school dinner, eaten in the classroom.
If you would like more information about your child starting with us, please feel free to contact the school office who will be help.
We look forward to welcoming you!
Sunbeams Curriculum Information
Phonics
Phonics is a big part of our early years curriculum and we have fun phonics sessions everyday. We want your child to develop a love of reading which is why we follow Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. This starts with Phase 1 activities in Nursery and progresses through to Phase 5. We teach the children simple ways of remembering sounds and letters through the use of rhymes, pictures and games. Your child will bring home books linked to the sounds, and then further down the line, texts that we read in class. As well as this we visit our library as much as possible to choose books of interest to share with you.
Reading
We want to promote a love for reading from the earliest age and operate a book sharing scheme from Nursery where children are gifted a book bag and bring home a sharing book to enjoy weekly.
Children in Reception, Year 1 and 2, read fully decodable books with an adult 3 times per week during our ‘Reading Practice’ sessions. These books are then sent home for children to build their reading fluency and showcase their developing skills and phonetic knowledge to their parents/carers.
The 3 reading practice sessions in school each have a different focus; decoding, prosody and comprehension. Our reading books in Reception, Y1 and Y2 are 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Big Cat books'
As well as their matched phonics reading book, children will also bring home a 'sharing' library book to promote reading for pleasure. Your child will not be able to read this on their own. This book is for you both to read and enjoy together
We encourage you to support your child daily with their reading and their phonics and ask that you make a note of when your child has read in their reading record. Should you have any questions about phonics and early reading, please speak to a member of the EYFS team.
More information about the way we teach phonics and reading in school can be found under the curriculum page follwed by reading/phonics.
Outdoor Learning
As well as daily physical learning opportunities both indoors and outdoors children will have additional weekly PE and WildTribe sessions.
PE
Children in Rainbows will have their PE session on a Tuesday afternoon.
Wild Tribe
Wild Tribe outdoor learning sessions will take place on Thursday afternoons for Rainbows and Year 1 for the Autumn Term. Can you please ensure your child has old clothes and wellington boots in school for these sessions.