Welcome to Early Years

It is our belief that the purpose of education is to provide young people with the knowledge and skills to prepare our children for their diverse working lives, build character, teach knowledge for its own intrinsic value and ignite a love for learning.

In Early Years, we are the opening scene; hooking our littlest learners into a voyage where they will discover a life-long love of learning. We believe it is our duty to provide our children with a strong foundation of knowledge that will equip them with the skills to lead a successful future. Through the provision of an inspiring and rich curriculum accessed through play and adult led activities and high quality direct teaching in phonics, reading, writing and maths, we support our children to become independent and confident lifelong learners.

Little Leaders, Big Tomorrow

In Nursery and Reception, your child will be working within the Early Year’s Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS). All providers work within this Statutory Framework with children from birth to the end of their Reception Class year. The Early Years Foundation Stage sets the standards to ensure that children learn and develop well and are safe and healthy. Activities are planned and delivered around 7 areas of learning and three characteristics of effective teaching and learning:  

There are three prime areas:

*Personal, Social and Emotional Development      

*Communication and Language

*Physical Development

There are four specific areas:

*Literacy 

*Mathematics

*Understanding the World

*Expressive Arts and Design

Characteristics Of Effective Teaching and Learning

*Playing and exploring (engagement)

*Active Learning (motivation)

*Creating and thinking critically (thinking)

If you have any questions about our Early Years provision, then please contact us using the email addresses below:

School office: office@gorsemoor.staffs.sch.uk  

Mrs Mogey (Early Years Lead): jmogey@gorsemoor.staffs.sch.uk

Mrs Campbell (Nursery Manager): ccampbell@gorsemoor.staffs.sch.uk

Our Curriculum

Our curriculum consists of a wide variety of topics, with key learning points planned throughout which ensures the children's knowledge develops during their time at Gorsemoor . Once the children have acquired the knowledge and skills, retrieval activities are planned and the children are given the opportunity to apply what they have learnt in the enhanced and continuous provision, indoors and outdoors. Adults within the setting value their role as facilitators of learning and support the children to follow their own ideas, apply key learning and to move their learning on in the moment.

We follow whole school policies and planning in Mathematics, Phonics and Writing, delivering high quality teacher led inputs which follows a clear progression of knowledge and skills from Nursery through to Reception and into Year 1.

In Phonics, we follow Sounds-Write and in Mathematics, we follow White Rose (NCETM Mastery Number Programme 2021-22) and use Number Blocks and Ten Town to supplement our teaching. Our writing focus is linked to high quality texts and we use Talk for Writing which enables the children to imitate story language.