Early Years Foundation Stage
The Nursery and Reception are the first 2 years in our school. They lay all the crucial foundations for your child’s education. At this stage, children learn primarily through play. Rich learning opportunities are created by our staff in both the indoor and outdoor environments to develop social, language and physical skills. The areas of learning within the Foundation Stage are:
Phonics
“Synthetic phonics offers the vast majority of young
children the best and most direct route to becoming
skilled readers and writers”
Sir Jim Rose, Rose Review of Reading 2006
Early reading skills are taught through a synthetic phonics approach at Hilltop. We begin to introduce Phonics using the Read Write Inc resources developed by Ruth Miskin. We also follow Letters and Sounds.
We offer regular workshops to guide parents and carers in supporting their children's development of Phonic and early reading skills. Parents of pupils in Key Stage 1 are invited to join their children for a weekly fun practical session to practise Phonics and Grammar skills.
Reading
Phonics is important for children to become effective readers, but it is not the only strategy used. It forms part of our language rich curriculum, so that pupils develop their wider reading skills at the same time. From an early age pupils take home picture books to enjoy with parents and siblings. families are encouraged to enjoy familiar stories, talk about the pictures and retell the events of the story. As children become ready to start to take reading books home, they follow the progressive colour banded Read Write Inc scheme to develop their growing reading skills. As children progress through school and their reading confidence and skills grow, books from a variety of reading schemes together with books written by popular children's authors are introduced to further develop their confidence and accuracy. We encourage children to read at home with parents and carers as often as possible.
Key Stage 1 & 2 Curriculum
We believe that children need to learn core knowledge whilst developing the necessary skills to make them independent thinkers who will progress through school and beyond. With this in mind, our staff have worked hard to develop a curriculum which is dynamic, broad, balanced and innovative to ensure that the children enjoy a practical, fun, challenging learning experience that will prepare them for life in 21st Century Britain. We recognise that children need a curriculum that is wider than the statutory National Curriculum. Where possible, content is covered within the context of whole term topics. Staff within each Key Stage plan together to cover all areas of the curriculum over the course of a two year rolling programme. Examples of topics at each Key Stage include:
Key Stage 1 (Years 1 & 2): Living in Windsor, Rainforests, Space
Key Stage 2 (Years 3 & 4): Exploring Iceland, Ancient Egypt
An overview of the different curriculum areas can be seen in the Windsor Schools Curriculum Site. Specific details of this term and previous term's learning can be seen in the Learning Updates published each half term.