Lee-on-the-Solent Infant and Nursery School
LEAP to success at Lee!
At Lee-on-the-Solent Infant and Nursery School we believe that childhood is precious and should be protected. A child is ‘five for one year of their life’ and we share with the parents and carers the huge responsibility of ensuring that their early years are the very best they can be.
Developing the child holistically is of the utmost importance and with this in mind we offer a broad, balanced and highly personalised curriculum. We endeavour to provide enrichment in every way possible for example, Forest School, sensory curcuits, mindfulness, sports activites, drama, choir, ukulele and steel pans.
Every child is loved and nurtured so that they can take risks and make mistakes in a safe environment, we know that the greatest learning stems from making mistakes and solving problems.
Our Curriculum is based on our commitment to our values:
‘LEAP to success at Lee’
Our learning behaviours drive our planning and assessment procedures:-
At Lee-on-the-Solent Infant and Nursery School reading is of upmost importance to us as we recognise that it opens the doors to all other areas of learning.
Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum
The Early years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is the period of education from birth to 5 years. In our Nursery, Preschool and Reception we follow the EYFS Curriculum. This is organised into three Prime and four Specific Areas of Learning.
Prime Areas
Personal, Social, Emotional Development
This involves helping children to develop a positive sense of themselves, and others; to form authentic relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Communication and language development involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations.
Physical Development
Physical development involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food. Children receive PE, Yoga, Dance and a host of gross motor activities both in and outdoors.
Specific Areas
Mathematics
Mathematics involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces, and measure.
Literacy
Literacy development involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children are given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
Expressive Arts and Design
Expressive arts and design involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.
Our curriculum is progressive and purposeful and provides the children with the knowledge and skills to be ready for learning in key stage 1. We prepare children to reach the Early Learning Goals by the end of Foundation stage and ensure that all children make at least good progress from their starting point. Throughout their time in our EYFS, the children develop a sense of belonging to our school family and are ready to transition into year 1. They have secure strong foundations and are ready to continue their learning journey. They move forward as confident, independent learners who are able to communicate their ideas.
Key Stage One
In KS1 we follow the National Curriculum to teach the following subjects:
Core Subjects
Foundation Subjects
The Curriculum, in each year group, is planned through irresistible hooks which entices child initiated learning. Children are organised in mixed ability classes per year group and learning is personalised to meet individual and group needs. Spiritual, Moral, Social, Cultural (SMSC) skills promote Fundamental British Values (FBV) as a part of the curriculum and everyday life in school.
PHONICS
Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen DFE validated Systematic, synthetic, phonics programme.
The aim of ELS is ‘Getting all children to read well, quickly’.
ELS teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words.
Children begin learning phonics at the very beginning of Reception and it is explicitly taught every day. Children are given the knowledge and the skills to then apply this independently. Throughout the day, children will use their growing phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and as a class.
Children continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through the school to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.
We follow the ELS progression and sequence. This allows our children to practise their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence). As a result, our children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover.
Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support each child’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.
We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs ‘sh’ (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs ‘igh’ (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs ‘eigh’ (four letters spelling one sound).
We teach children to:
The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching and how to apply this when reading. ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Since interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.
Supporting Reading at Home:
At the beginning of each academic year, the school holds information sessions for parents and carers to find out more about how we teach Phonics, Reading and Writing and how to support this at home.
More support for parents and carers can be found here:
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/essential-letters-and-sounds/
READING
Decodable readers
It is vital that whilst children are learning to read, they read books that match their phonic knowledge. The Oxford University Press decodable readers support Essential Letters and Sounds and have been carefully matched to every aspect of the programme. We use these books in school and the ELS e-books to read at home.
Throughout the year groups we use a range of published books including Essential Blending Books, Little Blending Books, Hero Academy, Word Sparks, Hero Academy (Non Fiction) and Traditional Tales, Oxford Reading Tree, Story Worlds, Rigby Star, Oxford Project X, Reading Champions, Hopscotch, Fireflies, Tree Tops, Snap Dragons, Ginn Lighthouse and Discovery World.
Star Reading Challenge
Our weekly Star Reading Challenge encourages children to read at home daily. This can include their school reading book/e-book, library books, social reading eg magazines/comics, recipes, menus, signs etc and sharing a story together. All children who achieve this are celebrated in our Friday Assembly and one child from each year group wins a star reader book as a prize for their commitment to reading.
Library
Our Librarian, Mrs Newell ensures our school library is well stocked with a lovely range of books, the children have a weekly library visit where they are taught library skills and choose a book to take home. We call this their ‘read for pleasure’ book – they may not be able to independently decode this book but instead, you can enjoy reading together as a family.
THIS PAGE IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT - WE WILL BE UPDATING OUR CURRICULUM INFORMATION VERY SOON.
For additional information on our curriculum, please follow the links below.
Hampshire and National documents are followed by Lee-on-the-Solent Infant and Nursery School. Specific aspects are delivered in an order appropriate to the learning needs of the children.
Follow the links below to find additional information about the curriculum for each year group and a timetable detailing all our extra curricular activities.