BIS HCMC Primary Parent Handbook

EYFS - F3

Meet the Team

Rachel Sutton

Year Group Leader

Tamsyn Smith

Lorraine Loh

Paul Muldoon

Josette Harris

Gurvinder Paul

what is F3?

Our Principles

The EYFS framework sets the UK standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five. The curriculum is built around four principles.

1. Our Unique Children

We focus on how children develop; we recognise they are all different, but should be treated equally. Positive relationships and good communication are vital. Children need to learn about risks and safety, how to make good choices and how to respect boundaries. We make every attempt to provide full opportunity for each child to do their best and we achieve this by ensuring their physical and emotional needs are met during their time in our EYFS setting.

2. Our Positive Relationships

This theme is about children learning to manage their feelings and build relationships. We respect all kinds of families and aim to develop a positive two-way relationship with parents and carers. We will support, listen and work with the children at BIS to help them learn.

3. Our Enabling Environments

We plan and check each child's progress and make every attempt to involve parents and the local community. We ensure that inside and outside spaces are safe, interesting, challenging and engaging. We support children working as a team to help them succeed.

4. Learning and Development

At BIS we focus on ensuring young children learn through play and exploration, with support for each individual. We encourage children to develop imagination, to get actively involved in learning and to make decisions. We make every attempt to develop children's creativity and critical thinking, balancing the need for both the children and adults to lead the learning.

What our children say

I like colouring.

I like splash pool and ELC as it is fun.

I like my teacher, we sit on the carpet and talk.

I like lego as you can make many things.

I like blocks as I can build a marble run.

I like playing together, ice cream store in the ELC.

I like everything it is lots of fun and lots of different toys.

Communication with parents

Here at BIS HCMC, we value the importance of effective communication and the sharing of your child's learning. We use an online learning journal called SeeSaw. Your child's teacher will update your journal weekly which allows you to see the exciting things that your child is doing in F2. We also want to know what your child has been learning at home, therefore we encourage you to add photos of your child's journal too.

How to get started with Seesaw .pdf

Click here to access Seesaw at home: https://app.seesaw.me and then use your login details that will be sent to you from school. Workshops and help sheets will be available - please speak to your class teacher for more information.

Other important communication tools are:

Email is used regularly as a means of getting messages quickly to the class teacher, and vice-versa.
Weekly learning letter - this will come to you every Friday on the Seesaw platform.

The weekly update from the Head Teacher is also a wonderful collection of highlights from the week just completed and are available on the News and Updates section of the school website here. Go back regularly as these pages are updated throughout the week.

Working together

At BIS we recognise that you are the most important person in your child's life. Therefore we work closely with you and invite you to take part in various activities, including coffee mornings, celebrations, picnics, activity days and much more.

You will be informed of your child's individual progress during the year through parent/teacher meetings and reports. You will be also made aware of your child's next steps in learning and how you can help at home.

If you have any questions about your child's learning and development please speak to their class teacher who will be happy to help.

What will your child be learning?

Play All Day

‘Play’ is a common term used in EYFS. But what does that mean, what does that look like and how do we know children are learning? Combining the expertise of our teachers in observing interests of the children, and our environment, teachers set up playful experiences for the children to ‘play all day’ in a way to ensure that they are active learners and constantly making connections. Teachers enhance play in the moment by adding resources, by joining in play and by modelling language. Teachers take time to understand what children are interested in and how children are playing together before they join in play. They also strive not to direct the play but to empower the children by letting them lead.

Each classroom and ELC is set up to stimulate children in all 7 areas of our learning and to ensure that children have continual access to the toys, games and resources for them to play in the way that they choose. Our timetables are set up to try and allow long periods of uninterrupted play since this is when we know children can explore concepts at a deeper level.

Curriculum

The English EYFS Framework explains how and what your child will be learning to support their healthy development. Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development. Children should mostly develop the 3 prime area first. These are:

Communication and Language
Physical Development
Personal, Social and Emotional Development

These prime areas are considered to be the most essential for your child's healthy development and future learning. As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design

These 7 areas are used to plan your child's learning and activities. At BIS we follow children's interests and have core texts that are taught using Talk for Writing technique. Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active through creative thinking, which takes place both indoors and outdoors.

Click here to view more information on Development Matters. Do come and talk with the class teacher if you have any questions.

What will your learning environment look like?

Celebrations and Special Days

BIS is a school in which special days are embraced and celebrated joyfully. From small birthday celebrations in individual classes to the whole school Moon Festival; from Teachers Day to International Week, our youngest learners love to be a part of whole school events. They give us wonderful opportunities to ensure we provide rich experiences for enjoyment and recognition of traditions and festivals within our school and wider community.

We harness the international flavour of our children and families to celebrate festivals from around the world such as Diwali and Christmas as well as festivals from our host Vietnamese culture. We also love an opportunity to demonstrate the creativity of our children and teachers in dress up days to support whole school celebrations like Book Week, as well as dressing up opportunities to support topics, themes and individual class interests, for example pirate dress up days or Goldilocks tea parties.

We actively look forward to welcoming parents and families to join in celebrations within the life of our school. Here are our EYFS celebrations throughout the year:

Age related expectations

It is important to remember that all children are different and do not grow and develop at the same rate. Your child's teacher will plan engaging and inspiring learning experiences to allow your child to meet the curriculum objectives for their age.

Our Age Related Expectations, or ARE for short, outline our end of year success criteria for what a child who has been through each phase here at BIS HCMC should expect to be achieving. Progress through the AREs will be shared with parents at various points throughout the year, namely through Parent Teacher Student Conferences (PTSC) and termly reports or updates. Progress through the AREs will be shown using the statements Support (S), Developing (D), Meeting (M) and Exceeding (E). The AREs provide an excellent opportunity for parents to engage on a much closer basis with the progress being shown by their children, and offer the chance for target setting to become meaningful in order to further develop in any area of the curriculum.

What to put in my child's bag

A spare uniform

Sometimes learning and having fun can be messy. So a spare uniform will be needed.

Hat

All children must wear a hat to go out to play. Please label with your child's name and class.

Water bottle

Please no glass and label with your child's name and class.

Swimming Kit

Towel and swimming costume should be brought in for your child's splash pool session. Please label all items with your child's name and class.

Library folder

Please bring your child's library folder and book into school on their designated day.

Specialist Lessons

Library

Each week your child will go to the library. They will bring home a book, so please share it with them. You can also access the library before and after school and take out a second book to share at home.

PE

Every week the children have a PE lesson with a member of staff from the PE department. They focus on physical development skills using the large PE equipment in the gym. They attend with the teaching assistants from their class and observations are shared on Seesaw.

All children also have a lesson in the swimming pool focusing on techniques.

Music

The Music Department at BIS HCMC believes strongly that the Performing Arts play a significant role in your child’s educational journey from FundinoTots to Year 6 and beyond, and every child should be able to fulfil their musical potential. Our overall aim is for the students to develop a lifelong love of music through an enjoyable, immersive and challenging musical curriculum. The curriculum focuses on singing, movement, the playing of different instruments and introducing music theory. During their music lessons students will learn about the elements of music such as pitch, dynamics and tempo, through a variety of practical activities. All students will have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument for at least one year through our whole-class band programme.

Our collaboration with the world-renowned Juilliard School allows us access to their innovative Creative Classroom, through the exploration of 12 core works and specially-designed creative activities to complement these. This supplements our already rich musical curriculum which features a balance of performing, composing and listening. The Juilliard Creative Classroom encourages the children to develop confidence in the three main areas of ‘ways of doing’, ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of thinking’ and visits from Juilliard alumni allow the children to see and hear world-class musicians.

In addition to our thriving curriculum music lessons, at BIS HCMC Primary we are able to offer a wide range of extra-curricular musical activities designed to engage as many students as possible and to further extend their creative learning. This includes multiple choirs, orchestras and ensembles. We are also able to provide access to individual instrumental lessons at the school through a team of highly qualified and experienced musicians. Children can start lessons from Year 1 upwards and are strongly encouraged to do so. Many children take advantage of our link with ABRSM to further their progress through this established and respected examination system.

ICT

In Foundation 3 is the first year where we have dedicated ICT lessons and these happen every week for 45 minutes. Our goal is to build an understanding of digital technology, look at how it is important in the world today and how we can use it as a tool to learn.

Working in small groups with high teacher to student ratios we learn with a range of tools and devices. We use BeeBots as an introduction to robotics and positional language, various apps and programs to learn about loops and directions events in coding and we use iPads to record and share learning in creative and visual ways. By learning about a range of different applications we believe that we are building a student’s digital toolkit so that they know that they are able to share their learning and understanding in a range of ways like text or image or photo or puppet show.

EAL

In Foundation 3 we offer a foundation programme. All children are observed at the beginning of F3 to assess their language needs. Those who join the EAL programme receive three hours of specialist language support per week, which is a combination of small group support and in class support. The input follows the English EYFS Development Matters Curriculum and is personalised to their language needs.

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