Early Years

Our Nursery is led by Miss Green (Assistant Headteacher) and Miss Price (Nursery Manager).  Our teaching assistants are Mrs Allport and Mrs Steeley. Our Nursery is open to 3 year olds on a Tuesday-Thursday. 

The Early Years Foundation Stage is for children leading up to Reception age.  At Hawkesley, this is our Nursery and Reception children.   Our teaching and learning focuses on ensuring children develop in a safe environment that supports their wellbeing and social skills, as well as their growing independence. 

We operate Continuous Provision with high-quality resources for the age and stage of each year groups development, both in indoor and outdoor provision.  This supports the development of the Characteristics of Effective Learning: Playing and Exploring, Active Learning and Creating and Thinking Critically.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) has seven areas of learning to support children’s development:

  • Personal and Social Education
  • Communication and Language
  • Physical Development 
  • Literacy
  • Maths
  • Understanding the World
  • Expressive Arts and Design

 Our provision has a real focus on basic skills: particularly in early reading and Maths.

We follow ‘Floppy’s Phonics’ for teaching early phonic reading skills and the children read a variety of books following the Oxford Reading Tree systematic synthetic phonic reading scheme. Teachers read other ‘real’ books with the children to help the children’s language development.

Maths in the EYFS encompasses many skills, from number recognition and simple addition, to describing properties of shape and pattern.  Each class in our early years has a daily taught maths session, as well as access to high quality resources, focus activities with an adult and exciting maths games and provocations.