Starting Reception

Welcome to school, welcome to Blisland!

Welcome to Blisland! We are delighted to welcome you and your child to our Reception class.

Mrs Sally Elliott teaches our Recption/KS1 class, working alongside is Mrs Gunner and Miss Polkinghorne

Your child will be able to access both indoors and outdoors throughout the day and will learn through child initiated play (expertly supported by adults) and staff led guided sessions. Every day children will be taught phonics through a structured DfE approved programme, as well as accessing all areas of the EYFS curriculum across the week. Reading is also prioritised as it opens up a world of learning to our children.

We will, as always, support you and your child to ensure a smooth transition back into school. If there is anything you wish to discuss or inform us of, please do email in the first instance as we can then arrange contact by phone if you wish.

Our Approach

Early Years Foundation Stage is about how children chldren learn as well as what they learn. Children need opportunites to develop their own play and independent exploration. They also need adults to scaffold their learning by giving them just enough help to achieve something they could not do independently. Helping children to think, discuss and plan ahead is important, like gathering the materials they need before making a den before they start building. These are ways of helping children to develop the characteristics of effective learning.

Our approach is underpinned by providing the children with developmentally appropriate opportunities for learning. When the children start with us, we spend lots of time getting to know them and their abilities, interests and characteristics of learning. We use this knowledge of the whole child to carefully pitch learning to ensure each child individually makes progress and succeeds.

The structure of our day reflects the children’s needs. We balance the ratio of adult-directed and child-led learning and, very importantly, consider the needs of the children as the year progresses. We put the children at the heart of our curriculum. We plan from their interests and interweave this alongside what they need to learn and develop in their knowledge and skills. We plan for all areas of the curriculum in a holistic way and lots of the children’s activities will be supporting many areas of learning and development at the same time.

We value all children as individuals and recognise that each child’s learning journey will be different. We offer a stimulating environment which encourages children to, both independently and with support of an adult, apply their learning. Children can explore, test and build on previous learning as well as developing new knowledge and skills through meaningful play. We support children to take risks, develop their own ideas and experience new things. We encourage our children to practise, explore, discover and develop through our learning environments.

Partnerships with Parents

We strongly believe that it is important for us to have strong and respectful partnerships with our parents. This helps to build the foundations for children to thrive at Blisland Primary Academy. We recognise and celebrate parents and carers as major stakeholders in their child’s education. This is reflected in our robust approach to transition within the early years.

We promote and encourage our parents and carers to work closely with us in supporting their child’s learning and development. This is achieved with regular feedback and handovers with our parents/carers, home learning opportunities provided by our school, workshops throughout the year, information packs on learning, liaising with parents/carers about their child’s successes and next steps, communication between home and school through Tapestry, and much more!

We share with our parents/carers that the help they give their child at home has a very significant impact on their child’s learning and development.