Early Years

Early Years At Sandylands

Our staff

The Early Years team at Sandylands have a passion for teaching our youngest learners. We strive to provide the best learning opportunities through an awe and wonder based learning environment and a creative curriculum.

Miss McLaren- Assistant Head and Early Years Lead 

Miss McLaren has a breadth of experience in Early Years, having spent 17 years working in a number of schools, all in Early Years.

  • She has a passion for providing young children with the best start to their Learning Journey at school and she has been a Leading Foundation Teacher in Lancashire for several years.
  • Miss McLaren has also worked on Nursery Projects with PVI settings to up skill Early years Practitioners with the aim of providing better outcomes for children before they start school.

Mrs Manning – Class teacher 

Our curriculum

We have developed a well sequenced personalised curriculum that provides the children with a sense of self identity, by learning about themselves,their families and their local community. It is a knowledge based curriculum so the children know more and remember more ,so they can continue their educational journey, deepening their understanding of subjects.

How have we developed the Sandylands way?

The curriculum is purposefully planned to provide the children with key knowledge embedded through play based learning. We want our children to have:

  • Experiences in nature, awe and wonder and learn about their local environment
  • Experience and talk about different seasons, weather and being outside as much as possible to provide these experiences.
  • Develop as an effective communicator.
  • Self-regulation and emotional development is key to help the children express their thoughts and feelings. We use mood monsters to encourage and model to the children how we name and talk about feelings.
  • Keep themselves safe.
  • Look after our environment.outside and inside. Looking after toys, resources, recycling paper, outdoors plants, animals in our environment, our seaside locality.
  • Value each other and our belongings
  • Physical development, being one of the prime areas is also a key element in Nursery. The children develop both fine and gross motor skills including the development of core strength which enables them to sit for writing.
  • Sustainability for our local areas and within school.

Language Development, Reading and Writing

  • Language and communication are fundamental life skills that children need to be successful with all aspects of their learning.
  • Our youngest learners have showed a low start point in these areas at the beginning of the year and so this has shaped our curriculum to cater for their needs.
  • Early language development is at the forefront of all learning in the EYFS.
  • Language development is planned for.
  • Staff incorporate key vocabulary into their modelling.
  • Language is displayed.
  • Question based learning is promoted by adults to allow children to develop their vocabulary.
  • WELLCOM screening and intervention is used to support the development of speech and language in nursery. Children are identified and from assessment and specific sessions are planned for and assessed to ensure progression.

Early Reading is at the forefront of all learning and our children are given as many opportunities as possible to access books.

  • Our reading areas promote awe and wonder of reading
  • Adults model reading
  • Books to access in all areas of the provision.
  • Badger Breaks- reading times are timetabled.
  • Weekly children’s library .
  • Reading after school clubs.
  • Our Reception Reading Area below

Read Write Inc Phonics

At Sandylands we follow the Read Write Inc phonics scheme. It allows for a clear learning of sounds, progression in skills and effective assessment.

We ensure that books are clearly matched to the children’s phonic abilities and progresses through the stages as the children’s skills develop.

RWI in Nursery focus on early listening skills. The children investigate different sounds, talk about RWI picture cards, develop vocabulary, begin oral blending, listen to stories with rhythm, rhyme and alliteration. The children love the many nursery rhymes and learning them off by heart!

https://sandylands-primary-school.schudio.com/curriculum/reading-phonics/phonics

Parent as partners in learning

Working with our families is an important part of a childs’ school journey and we value the partnerships enabling school to be successful for all.

  • We love to invite parents into school so the children can show their new knowledge and skills.
  • We provide the children with home learning packs that replicate school resources in Phonics and Maths.
  • We have ‘Cake and Curriculum’ Evenings to share resources and strategies that we use in school.
  • We share the children’s weekly learning via messages on parent app.
  • We have Tapestry accounts for all our Early Years families so they can share learning from home and school.
  • Our parental surveys provide a great insight into the childrens’ learning.
  • 100% of our current Reception parents thought that the children were settled into Sandylands, had progressed in their learning and the school home learning packs were very useful for them at home.

Extended schools and clubs

We offer the children a weekly after school club which is always very popular.

The school also offers Breakfast and After school club care from 7.30am until 5.30pm.