Learning in the Foundation Stage

Children arrive at St Monica's in Reception Class, coming from about twenty different pre-school providers.

There is a new Early Years Framework which has been introduced nationally. There are 3 Prime Areas 1. Personal, Social and Emotional (PSE), 2. Physical Development and 3. Communication and Language

Then there are 4 Specific Areas – Literacy, Mathematics, Knowledge and Understanding of the World and Expressive Arts and Design

Click on the links below to see the children in action!

Phonics and Reading

The children have daily phonics sessions using the Read, Write Inc scheme which was written by Ruth Miskin. The children are taught to recognise each sound and then begin blending them together. They are also taught to read words on sight, for example, a word such as "the" or "said" needs to be recognised straight away and not sounded out.

The children will begin taking reading books home using the Ruth Miskin scheme. We also use other schemes such as New Way and Oxford Reading Tree. When the children are reading with some fluency, they move onto the colour banded books. These books come from a variety of different reading schemes and are grouped into colour bands according to how difficult the books are to read. Children are heard reading individually about three times each week by the teachers, nursery nurses, teaching assistants and volunteers.

The children's reading is assessed using the PM Benchmarking Kit to ensure that the child is reading books at the right level.

We ask parents to read every night with their child for at least 10 minutes. It is important that this time is spent not just reading the words in the book but talking about what is happening, looking at the pictures and so on. It is also important for adults to read to their children so that the children hear a good model of reading and learn to love stories and books generally.