INFANT AND EARLY YEARS DEPARTMENT
The Nursery class is situated in a self-contained classroom with its own purpose built play area. The class provides places for 30 children each morning and is staffed by a teacher, a nursery nurse and a classroom assistant. The nursery and reception class children follow the Woodside School Early Years Curriculum which is designed to develop each child’s social, academic, artistic and physical skills.
The main infant (Key Stage 1) area consists of two general activity areas, and 3 small quiet rooms. For most of the day the children use the whole area and are organised into groups under the supervision of teachers, classroom assistants and parent helpers. At times it is necessary to bring the children together for registration, quiet discussion, newstime and other communal activities. At such times one of the quiet rooms may be used. These rooms are also used for specialised group activities or small-group teaching.
The younger reception class children will tend to spend longer periods at constructional play activities than those in the middle and upper infants. This is because their span of concentration is generally fairly short in formal learning situations and to be able to concentrate over a long period of time is, in itself, a skill which has to be learned slowly through the provision of appropriate experiences. The activities provided at school are carefully structured to develop this skill alongside other perceptual, intellectual and social skills that are a necessary foundation for later learning.
Gradually the children are introduced to learning of a more formal kind - i.e. learning with the help of work cards, textbooks or under the direct guidance of the class teacher. Informal learning still plays an important part in the child’s development but he/she is able to apply his/herself for increasingly longer periods in formally structured lessons with the class teacher. These lessons will introduce the simple concepts and mechanical skills of reading, writing and mathematics and furnish the child with elementary ideas of history and his/her surrounding world.
The child’s physical development is also important and this is catered for with periods of regulated physical exercise through games, gymnastics and dance.
One advantage of the JMI (Junior Mixed Infants) school is that the children’s transfer is eased when they transfer from the infants to the juniors (Key Stage 2). The parents and children already know the Head and the teaching staff and there is continuity in the teaching methods throughout the school. Although the classroom organisation may be different, and there may be a change of emphasis in various subject areas, the underlying philosophy remains the same. The children will continue to work within a common framework that has been clearly defined by the headteacher and staff at numerous meetings and this follows the National Curriculum and is recorded in a formal curriculum statement. A record of the child’s work and achievement is passed on throughout the school.
We believe that no single approach to learning is adequate for the wide range of ability and temperament met with in a large group of children. Some will respond to a more formal environment; others will react more readily to an informal approach which allows greater freedom and choice. At Woodside we try to cater for as many of the children’s needs as possible by incorporating into our school system a wide variety of methods and subject matter. In this way our children have the benefit of formal instruction, particularly in certain areas of the basic subjects (e.g. spelling, handwriting, number bonds, reading) but there is also a great deal of freedom and flexibility.