Teacher: Ms Trevathan

Support Staff: Mrs Thornhill & Miss Bowles

Key Information:

Reception places

For all Reception children, school begins at 8.45am and ends at 3.15pm. 

Tapestry and Twitter

At Waterside Primary Academy we aim to promote positive and strong relationships with our parents and carers. One way we do this is by using Tapestry in EYFS. Tapestry is an online app where each child is given their own profile. Teachers and support staff will upload photos and videos of your child throughout the week so that you can see all the learning and fun they are having at school. You are able to comment on, ask questions about and like the photos and videos. Likewise, you are able to upload pictures and videos at home and during the holidays. We love to see what you are all up to outside of school so we will like your photos and comment back. 

In addition, we also use Twitter to communicate with our parents, carers and local community. We will post photos and videos showing children's achievements and celebrating activities and experiences they have enjoyed in school. Please have a look at our Twitter page for a greater insight into this community.

Our school day

Our school day is split into Child Initiated Learning (CIL) and structured lessons. 

CIL is where the children have the chance to choose their ‘play’. The children can access activities from both inside and outside the classroom at all times. These activities are really important in helping children to develop their skills across the curriculum. During these activities, the practitioners will join in with play and talk to the children, make observations, take photos of key learning and record assessments. These are used to plan the next steps for each child. During CIL, the children are able to paint, design and create, role-play, experiment with water and sand, use the mud kitchen, ride bikes, plant, build and climb...anything they would like to enjoy! Please see our gallery for photos of the environment they can play in! 

In Nursery, our structured lessons consist of a daily circle time session, where the children will sing, enjoy stories, learn rhymes, be exposed to some sounds and numbers and develop their fine motor skills. The children will also take part in PE sessions with Reception. 

In Reception, our structured lessons consist of phonics and reading (Read, Write Inc is the programme we use), pathways (topic-type sessions) and maths. The children will also have one PE session a week. 

Read, Write Inc (RWI)

In order to teach our children to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension, we use Ruth Miskin’s Read Write Inc. phonics programme. In this programme, the children learn the English alphabetic code: first they learn one way to read the 40+ sounds and blend these sounds into words, then learn to read the same sounds with alternative graphemes.

They experience success from the very beginning. Lively phonic books are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and ‘tricky’ words and, as children re-read the stories, their fluency increases.

In Nursery, the children will be exposed to some sounds at a later point in the year. The main focus in Nursery is for children to enjoy stories. They will have several stories read to them each day and access to books at all times throughout the day. In addition, each week, your child will bring home a ‘Sharing Book’ to enjoy with you! Please read with your child every night.

In Reception, the children will start learning their sounds from September. Once they are confident with their sounds, they will progress onto reading ‘Ditty sheets’, these are story sentences that will be read in school and two will be sent home a week for you to read with your child. Once your child is confident with these, they will progress onto reading books. At this point, you will receive two new books every three days to read with your child. In addition, from September, each week, your child will bring home a ‘Sharing Book’ to enjoy with you! Please read with your child every night and record this in their reading log.

For more information, please contact the school office on 01494 786608 or email office@watersideprimaryacademy.org