Foundation

Welcome to the Foundation Unit web page

Here you will find copies of our newsletters and dates for your diaries! We also hope you enjoy looking at what the children have been learning about.

Unit Leader - Mrs Helen Davis

Class Teachers

Mrs Davis - Warren

Mrs Harvey - Warren

Miss Marshall - Haldon

Mrs Way - Haldon

Meet the Teachers

haldon@westcliff.org.uk

warren@westcliff.org.uk

Summer Term Unit News

Summer half-term 2

We have had a very busy end to the summer term. Our learning has been based on our curricular goal ‘I am a beach boffin’. We have learnt about keeping the beach clean and about different sea creatures. This culminated in a beach clean and play at Coryton cove.

We have read lots of pirate stories and role played pirate adventures. The children welcomed the pre-schoolers from two local nurseries to join in with our drama lessons. We received letters from Pirate Patch who set us tasks to make masks, treasure, treasure chest and messages.

The children made us very proud at the EYFS sports day at Dawlish College, taking part in a morning of sporting activities.

In art we have shown that we are ‘terrific tool users’ by making a sea creatures with moving parts.

We are so proud of all that the children have achieved this year, they have made an excellent start to school life.

Summer half-term 1

We have had a very busy bug themed half term. Our highlight has been looking after our class caterpillars. They are now chrysalises and we are hoping to see the final change into butterflies before the holiday. Our bug exploring had taken us to the school garden and the manor park. The children have used their scientific skills to identify, compare and make predictions. We have tested predictions will our cress growing experiment.We have enjoyed making mini beasts in our ‘working together’ groups, this has been led by the children and resulted in some spectacular creations.

Thank you for joining us on our Maths stay and play sessions . It was lovely to welcome you in to class to show how we teach number through play.

Spring Half-Term 2

Our themed learning this half term has been based on traditional tales, through reading and retelling the stories the children have extended their vocabulary, learning different words for 'said', ordinal and positional language alongside some new describing words. The children are becoming story tellers, they have used drama, puppets, story maps and even made their own books to retell traditional tales. Our next step is to begin to create our own stories.

We loved welcoming parents in to class to watch our phonics teaching, we hope this was helpful and supported you to help your child read at home. If you would like to book a time to come in to class to watch phonics please let us know. The children are doing so well with the Soundswrite scheme, we are amazed by their progress in reading and writing.

In Maths we have started to extend our number fact knowledge, we are teaching the children to keep number facts in there 'number fact box' (in their brains). Any calculations they can do on there fingers eg 4 + 2 can be learnt as number facts for them to recall.

We are in the process of updating our outdoor area, the children have enjoyed using our new writing shed and outdoor balance scales. The children love using our new bikes and helmets. In the summer term we are looking forward to more outdoor learning and making use of the community garden.

Spring half-term 1

What an exciting half term we have had with lots of learning about dinosaurs. A highlight was our 'Dinosaur Safari', we looked for clues indoors and out to track down our friend Rexy. Another favourite activity was our dinosaur poo investigation, the children turned detective again this time to solve the whodunnit mystery... which dinosaur had left a poo in our playground? We searched through a poo sample, finding leaves, grass and flowers, the children concluded that it must have been a herbivore!

The children have made super progress this term with their learning in phonics, they are all doing a great job with their word building and word reading and some of them are now able to read and write whole sentences.

We have been impressed by their focus in PE too. This half term we have been working on our gymnastic skills, jumping, balancing and making up sequences. After half term the children will need a PE kit in school all week, black shorts, a white T-shirt and PE shoes. Please remember to label all items.