Cultural Capital in the Early Years
The children at Warndon benefit greatly from a culturally enriched environment. In addition to cultural activities such as arts and crafts and specialist music and PE, we also offer a unique curriculum for the children. To ensure we give each child the best start in life and to support them to reach their full potential, our curriculum creates awe and wonder of the world around them which in turn broadens their horizons by extending and challenging them and creating experiences of which they wouldn’t otherwise encounter.
Forest School
A place where children develop a relationship between themselves and the natural world. Here they foster resilience, confidence, independence, creativity and problem solving through planned activities which offer the children the opportunity to take managed risks appropriate to the environment and themselves. Throughout the year, parents and carers are invited to join a session, which reinforces the positive experience for the children.
Woodwork (Reception)
At the woodwork bench, children access the tools and resources independently, working safely and creatively. Adults are available for support, modelling of skills and techniques and to enhance with language. Exceptional levels of engagement and concentration are regularly observed; accompanied with persistence and perseverance. Through being empowered to use real tools, being given responsibility, gaining new skills and taking pride in their creations, their self-esteem and confidence soars.
Story Time with Parents
Throughout the year parents are invited into school to observe practitioners modelling reading to the children. They then have the opportunity to read the books available in our classrooms with the children. Children are also invited back into school throughout the year for PJ reading evenings, where members of staff and parents read the children bedtime stories whilst they cuddle up with hot chocolate and blankets.
Stay and Play
Throughout the year we hold several stay and play sessions, which all parents are encouraged to attend. These vary in objectives, some upskill our parents such as reading, phonics and Seesaw, whilst more creative sessions such as making costumes and props for a topic and activity ideas for summer seek to improve communication and the working relationship between school and home.
Thrive
Thrive is a systematic approach to the early identification of emotional developmental needs in children. Through whole class screening, the emotional development of all children is monitored through an action plan of targeted activities. Thus enabling the healthy development of children’s emotional well-being.
The REAL project
Every year, disadvantaged families are targeted to be part of the REAL project. Through the project, practitioners work with parents to promote the literacy development of pre-school children as well as meeting some of the literacy and educational needs of the parents involved. Home visits based around the ORIM framework, shown parents/ carers ways to help develop and support their child’s early literacy skills. After each section of the ORIM framework, every year group holds a REAL workshop for all families to share and build on the skills covered in the home visits.
Time to Talk – the development of vocabulary
In all of our Early Years settings, we promote Time to Talk, where children have the opportunity to develop their communication and language skills. They are able to be exposed to new vocabulary, to learn how forward and backwards conversations work, to form full sentences and to discuss a particular topic. This language is then reinforced.
Author visits
Every year we read a book related to a topic we are covering and invite the author in to do a special reading and book signing. The visits often create a lasting impression on the children as it connects their learning in the classroom with the wider world. This in turn generates an enthusiasm for reading, motivating those who are more reluctant as well as improving the children’s writing confidence.
Library visits
To coincide with the Book Trust’s Time to Read book release we invite the librarians from our local library to come in and do a story and rhyme session. During these sessions children are given the opportunity to join the library and find out what is on offer so that they are motivated to return out of school hours with their family.
Emergency services
Throughout the year we look to embed the emergency services into a topic in a way that teaches the children how each service keeps us safe, respect for the officers and who to call in an emergency as well as supporting the children to know how to keep themselves safe in different scenarios.
Easter Bonnet parade
Every year the children make exquisite Easter bonnets at home with their parents, which they then proudly wear on a parade around the local area. This draws together the community as shop owners, families and local residents gather to watch the procession and follow us to the nearby church for an Easter service.
FANTASTIC foundations
Through the FANTASTIC lenses, which are used throughout our curriculum, our children acquire language, develop a varied vocabulary and begin to construct sentences, which in turns has a positive impact on their comprehension and writing.
Growing
The children are able to participate in planting, caring for and picking fruit and vegetables grown in our very own vegetable patch near Forest School. Children learn to tend for the plants, learning what they need to help them grow and look after them. Once the fruits and vegetables have grown, children are then able to have first hand experience in picking, chopping and cooking food that they have grown themselves, prompting discussions about healthy eating as well as developing a new skill.
Oral Hygeine
Early Explorers and Happy Hearts are supported by the Supervised Tooth Brushing project and aim to promote oral hygiene in school and at home. School staff have been trained to promote good dental practise, support children and families and raise awareness about the importance of daily oral hygiene and have been provided with resources to ensure this is put into practise!
Trips and Experiences
Throughout the year, several trips and experiences are planned into the curriculum to help the children broaden their knowledge by exposing them to things they wouldn’t encounter. These experiences enhance the children’s cultural awareness and develop their understanding of values and beliefs as well as challenging preconceived perceptions. Moreover, by seeing for themselves, the real life examples of what they have been learning, the children gain a deeper understanding of the topic, which increases their motivation to learn and retain the information. We focus heavily on our local environment, with trips and walks around the local community and partnership with services in the local area.
Opportunity to perform
Each child is given the opportunity to perform in our Nativity performances. They rehearse, make and wear costumes and props, learn lines and sing songs together in front of audiences. In addition to this, songs are chosen and performed at the Easter Bonnet Parade each year and instruments are played through a parade in the local community.
Two year old provision
The Academy is situated in an area of high deprivation. IMD data showed that more than 50% of our catchment resides in the bottom 1% of deprivation (ranked 72nd out of 32,844 areas nationally). 40% of children in Warndon live in recognised povertyr. Therefore we recognised there was a need in our community for high quality, engaging, accessible education for our youngest members. Therefore our two year old provision was set up under the moniker, Happy Hearts, as we felt this was key to the development of the whole child. Our data tracking shows that those who attend our 2 year old provision, outperform their peers in nursery and reception in the end of year assessments.
British Values
Throughout the year different cultural festivals and special events are planned in and the children spend a day exploring the culture and the festival. For example during Diwali, the children learn who celebrates the festival, why it is celebrated and how the community celebrate it. They then compare this to how the celebrate their own special days whilst partaking in a variety of themed activities from using clay to create diva lamps to learning a Bollywood dance. Children often partake in voting opportunities from choosing books to read for our family shared reading sessions to voting for their Attendopoly treat. All children are clear of the class expectations and actively promote these to their peers as well as understanding the difference between and a right and wrong choice.