Early Years

Teachers in Nursery, Kindergarten and Reception classes follow the principles and curriculum of the UK Early Years Foundation Stage framework. 

Our teaching in Early Years reflects the principles that: 

• Every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
• Children are encouraged to develop positive relationships. Partnership with parents is crucial to this development.
• The learning environment plays a key role in the children’s development.
• All children learn in different ways and at different rates.
• All areas of learning are equally important and inter-connected.

Teaching and learning for the children in our Early Years Department has a high emphasis on structured, creative play and interactive learning. The curriculum is themed to enable the areas of learning to be inter-related. Teachers are flexible to the needs of the children; for our Nursery children this means making individual links to their home environment. 

The children work towards achieving the Early Learning Goals in six areas of learning. 

1. Personal and Emotional Development
2. Communication, Language and Literacy
3. Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
4. Knowledge and Understanding of the World
5. Physical Development
6. Creative Development

Our experienced Early Years teachers are continually assessing the children’s progress through observation and conversation. Dialogue with parents is an essential part of this assessment process. Teachers build up a portfolio of children’s progress through photographs and recorded observations. These form the basis for discussions with parents, who are also invited to contribute to these portfolios.