Our Learning
RE
At St. Anthony’s, Religious Education is at the heart of everything we do. We take our responsibility to support our youngest learners at the beginning of their faith journey very seriously. Our Mission Statement, ‘We Grow and Learn With Jesus’, begins from the moment our children join us, and our hope is that it will stay with them throughout their lives.
We belong to the Diocese of Westminster and follow their scheme of work, set out in the Religious Education Curriculum Directory. Each Monday afternoons are dedicated to RE lessons, from which resources and stories are available for the children to revisit throughout the week. Within RE lessons the children hear the Gospel, learn about what Catholic’s believe, celebrate God’s creations and teachings and learn how we can live a Catholic life.
For more information about our RE curriculum, please click the link below:
Reading and Phonics
At St Anthony’s we want children to cultivate a lifelong love of reading and our aim is that every child will leave EYFS with the skills necessary to read simple sentences and the enthusiasm to read and engage with texts. We have a range of books throughout all areas in our EYFS classrooms, which are often changed so that they are relevant to the topics we are learning about at school, as well as taking into account the children’s interests. In our classrooms, we also have our wonderful cosy reading areas, which our children love to snuggle up in with a good book.
When it comes to teaching the vital skill of reading, we have implemented the Read, Write Inc. systematic synthetic phonics programme, written by Ruth Miskin. In Reception, a phonics lesson takes place every day. After the October half term, the expectation is that all children will know the first 16 sounds in the scheme. The phonics coordinator will assess every child each half term to determine the correct phonics group and reading books that match their ability. Children use their phonics throughout the curriculum, where children are encouraged and supported to use their knowledge when reading and writing.
For more information about reading at St. Anthony’s, please click on the links below:
Writing
We want all of our children to develop the gross and fine motor skills necessary to become confident and competent writers. In our Nursery, we begin helping our children with their motor skills in a variety of different ways.
We climb, we run, we jump, we throw, we catch, we build.
We squeeze, we roll, we pull, we push.
We encourage early mark making using a variety of different materials in a variety of different sizes.
When children are ready to begin writing, we support them to identify letters and shapes relevant to them, such as their name letters, age or favourite shape. We want children to be able to give meaning to their marks, so it is very important that we are always speaking and communicating with the children when they are making marks.
Drawing Club
Drawing Club is the approach we use in Reception in St Anthony’s to teach English. It was created by a practitioner called Greg Bottrill and it brings the magic of story into the classroom. It is a way to share skills including fine motor, early writing, vocabulary, maths and most importantly, imagination and excitement!
Maths
In Early Years, we want our children to gain accuracy and fluency with basic maths. We want them to become excited by maths and begin to see it in the world around them.
