Welcome To Acorns (Nursery)
In Acorns you will find:
Mrs M Leffler
EYFS Leader & Class Teacher
Mrs J Shaw
Level 3 Teaching Assistant
Miss B Bates
Apprentice Teaching Assistant
What Happens in Acorn Class
We are excited to welcome you to Acorns class!
The children in our class have a balanced curriculum which is supported by the Birth to 5 document to help support your childs development and learning. Children have access to both carpet sessions and continuous provision which is tailored to meeting the development of your child in the following areas of learning:
- Personal, Social and emotional development
- Communication and Language development
- Physical development
- Literacy Development
- Mathematical development
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
Phonics
Children in Acorns class have a daily phonics carpet session. We teach phase 1 phonics phonics in Autumn and Spring term before moving on to Read Write Inc. Nursery phonics scheme in Summer term.
Phase 1 phonics is the first stage of the phonics teaching programme. At this stage, the focus is primarily on developing speaking and listening skills. Speaking and listening are an important set of literacy skills that will create the foundation to a lot of your children’s further learning. Listening requires the fundamental skill of focusing attention on the speaker to be able to hear and understand what the speaker is saying. Speaking skills require students to take turns, speak confidently, stay on topic and speak with clarity.
Phase 1 phonics also lays the foundation for further Phase 2 stages.
Phase 1 phonics skills that are developed at this stage include:
- Environmental sounds
- Instrumental sounds
- Body percussion (e.g. clapping and stamping)
- Rhythm and rhyme
- Alliteration
- Voice sounds
- Oral blending and segmenting (e.g. hearing that d-o-g makes ‘dog’
Maths
We also have a daily Mathematics carpet session. We use Numberblocks to help support our children with their maths skills through the NCETM and the White Rose Hub
Numberblocks is a pre-school BBC television series aimed at introducing children to early number.
Snappy animation and loveable characters combine with engaging storylines to gently introduce concepts of number to support early mathematical understanding.
For episodes:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/numberblocks
For information about the NCETM:
https://www.ncetm.org.uk/classroom-resources/ey-numberblocks-support-materials/
Drawing Club
Drawing Club is an approach designed early years advocate and author Greg Bottrill. Drawing Club immerses children into a world full of imagination. It is through drawing club that we open up the magic world of tales and story to children whilst at the same time enriching their language skills, developing their fine motor and share a really special time with them. Drawing Club is a fantastic place to start a child’s experience of school ‘Literacy’
Drawing Club is based upon the 3M principle. These are making conversation, mark making and mathematics. We use a book, traditional tale or an animation as a portal for the week. Children learn new, exciting vocabulary that we revisit each day of the week. We draw characters on a Monday, settings on a Tuesday and we ‘wonder’ on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Our stories this half term are:
Jack and the Beanstalk
Frans Flower
Acorns Environment
Our classroom layout can change each half term to meet the needs of the children and link with what we are learning about.
Our classroom, both indoors and outdoors reflects the holistic child and covers all 7 areas of learning. The activities set up in our classroom may change on a weekly or two weekly basis, depending on what the children’s interests are and what we are learning about.
Communication and Language
Communication and Language is one of the Prime Areas of Learning in the Early Years Curriculum.
We teach the three aspects of this, Speaking, Understanding and Listening and Attention throughout all of our adult directed, child initiated sessions and as part of our key worker time. Communication and Language skills are important for learning across the whole curriculum so it is vital that we get this right for our children.
If you would like to see the expectations for your child’s Communication and Language skills please see the attached “Small Talk” document. As part of our coversion over to TCAT, we have recently become part of a project called ‘The Oracy Project’, which is all about how children develop the oracy skills they need in order to communicate effectively. This is something over the next year that we will be developing as an EYFS team. Please see the attached flyer, titled ‘ TCAT Talks’ to see how you can support your child’s oracy and language skills at home.
We may talk to you if we believe your child could benefit from some extra support from Warrington’s Speech and Language services. Please feel free to ask any member of the Early Years team if you have any questions.
