Intent
At Crowan Primary School we believe that early childhood is the foundation on which children build the rest of their lives. Our aim is to provide a caring and stimulating environment where every child feels empowered to develop as an independent learner. Our practitioners will provide first- hand opportunities that build upon children’s experiences and interests to enable all children to reach their potential in every aspect of their development.
Our aim is to provide an highly stimulating environment, incorporating both indoor and outdoor learning opportunities with the Characteristics of Effective learning weaving throughout all activities to encourage resilience, awe and wonder and a joy for learning.
We follow a child centred approach to learning, building upon the skills and knowledge that children already have when starting at Crowan and developing a true partnership with parents and carers in order to encourage individualised, exciting and unique learning experience for all children within our care.
Implementation
At Crowan, we offer a balance of child-initiated and adult-led learning using continuous provision and small group activities. We understand that play is an essential part of the early years and encourage child-led provision, which is supported and extended by adults and provision which is guided towards specific educational outcomes. We aim to scaffold the children in being able to become more independent learners and achievers and are always aiming to embed a true love of learning!
Impact
At Crowan, we feel it is vitally important to ensure that we are making a difference. We ensure that staff collaborate in a planning cycle thinking about what we want the children to be able to do, what they already know, how we can build upon interests and vocabulary, activities that can maximise learning and assessing any interventions we can provide to move learning on. We aim to be constantly observing and noting where the children are within their learning and which next steps we can provide to extend their learning further.
How do we organise transition at Crowan?
Starting at a new school is a huge step for all children and at Crowan we aim to make the progress as simple and easy for both learners and parents. We run open evenings in the Autumn term, which allows parents to meet the team and see all that Crowan has to offer in terms of provision and curriculum. Once places are allocated we work closely with parents, preschools and child-minders and children are invited to regular stay and play sessions before starting school. These sessions are also open to anyone with children under the statutory school age, to give them the opportunity to get to know us and our school.
In the Summer term we hold a 'New Starters' meeting for parents and children are invited to more formal transition sessions. We run a staggered intake during the first week of the Autumn term, which allows children to transition into school in a way that doesn't overwhelm them. This also allows us the time to meet with parents and any other outside agencies regarding worries or concerns that they wish to share.
How do we teach early reading at Crowan?
At Crowan School, reading is always a priority. We use 'Read, Write' Inc' to teach our children phonics from the start of Reception and encourage children to use their sound knowledge when in school and at home. We work in partnership with parents and keep a reading diary that documents when each child reads with an adult, both at school and at home.
We also believe that high quality texts are paramount to engage children and create lifelong readers, who read for pleasure. We aim to link our texts to our topic and below you can find our book spine that informs you of the stories and texts we will be looking out over the course of each half term. We vote for our stories each day, and pick a range of text types and genres to make sure our children are exposed to a range of books and stories throughout their time with us. Books are shared throughout the day, at set times, and when in provision with the children.
Texts in provision are used to allow children to access a diverse range of stories, information and poetry and they can also access books that match their phonics ability.
How do we engage parents in their children's learning?
We feel learning happens best when there is a true partnership between parents and practitioners. We give parents the opportunity to meet with us in the first week of school and hold a formal parental consultation within the first half term of the children starting school. This allows us to let parents know how well their child has settled into school. Parent consultations are also held in the Spring term. We use Tapestry online learning journeys which shares each child's individual learning journey and parents can comment and add their own observations from home. At the end of the year, a school report is shared with parents too, highlighting their children's progress in line with the Early Learning goals.
