At Barrow Hill Primary Academy, we aim to provide the highest quality care and education for all our children, giving them a strong foundation for their future learning. We create a safe and happy environment with motivating and enjoyable learning experiences that enable children to become confident and independent.

We ensure children’s interests are fostered and developed alongside child initiated and adult led activities that meet all aspects of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum.

We have a 13 place fully funded nursery every morning.  If you are interested in securing your child a place in our nursery, please speak to Miss Cooper, the EYFS teacher or Shona Buckley, School Business Assistant, for more information.   

Early Years Foundation Stage

Children who enter the school in the Nursery or Reception are part of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

The EYFS curriculum has seven areas of learning. These are: 

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Literacy (Reading and Writing)
• Maths
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

Please see the link below to read a useful document called 'What to Expect, When?'  It provides key information about the knowledge and skills your child should be developing depending on their age

Communication

Communication is vital to success and at Barrow Hill Primary Academy, we recognise the importance of talk through the modelling of the spoken language and carefully planned activities. Please take a look at the documents below which provide information of developing speech and language in young children. 

Working with Parents

We recognise that children learn and develop well when there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.

Parents are their children’s lifelong promoters of development and learning. Our curriculum considers how to harness parents’ voices and deep appreciation and understanding of their children, parents’ knowledge of their children can be knitted into the fabric of daily practice. Parents and carers have a rich knowledge of their children’s personalities, preferences, interests and skills.

We work with parents in a range of different ways which range from communication with home to inviting parents into the school setting:  

• Play Together sessions every Tuesday in school
• Reading books shared between home and school
• Termly attainment updates
• Termly special week teaching and learning moments
• Parent workshops (for example on phonics)
• Contributing to Learning Journeys through special week home sheets and photographs
• Progress meetings and feedback from special week
• Display to celebrate learning at home
• Story afternoons

Parents and/or carers are kept up to date with their child’s progress and development. The progress check and EYFS profile helps to provide parents and/or carers with a well-rounded picture of their child’s knowledge, understanding and abilities.

Each child is assigned a key person who helps to ensure that their learning and care is tailored to meet their needs. The key person supports parents and/or carers in guiding their child’s development at home. The key person also helps families to engage with more specialist support, if appropriate. For some pupils, it may be necessary for the academy SENDCo or Inclusion Team to offer advice and support.

Care

To be most effective, our curriculum pays as much attention to children’s care as it does to play and learning as these are intertwined and impact equally on children’s development and overall well-being. Respectful care giving requires respectful interactions. In a respectful care giving approach, we recognise the child as a free and equal human being, with whom we are working in co-operative partnership. The adult does everything with the child rather than to the child, so care events become co-operative dialogues in which the child feels competent, recognised and valued as an individual.  There is some guidance below to support with toilet training your child.

Play Together

Every Tuesday afternoon 13:30-15:00, parent of children in the local community are invited into the school hall to attend our Play Together sessions which are facilitated by EYFS and skilled staff from school.  During the sessions, provision is set up for children aged from birth to full time school age.  Activities and games are chosen to encourage adults to play and interact with their children and build their network of support both within school and friends in the community.  There is no charge for Play Together sessions.