RECEPTION
MRS PIERPOINT & MISS ROBINSON
Mrs Pierpoint has been with us since September 2022, and she is the Early Years Leader, Maths Leader and Phonics Leader. Mrs Pierpoint is also Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead. She has 11 years of teaching experience in Key Stage One and Early Years and is very passionate about early education. Through the enabling and rich environment, along with structured group teaching she provides children with the key foundations needed to set them up for success in their future years. She loves facilitating the children’s learning and developing their imagination and independence through purposeful play, open ended activities and lots of outdoor learning.
Mrs Alcock is our wonderful Reception Teaching Assistant who loves providing the children with creative and fun activities. She enjoys being outdoors, especially in our Reception outdoor area and garden. Mrs Alcock is a nurturing and kind Teaching Assistant who provides our youngest children with a supportive start to school life.
Miss Robinson has been teaching since 2013 and has been at Haslington Primary Academy since 2020 and is the Outdoor Learning Lead. Most of Miss Robinson’s teaching career has been in Early Years and Key Stage One and she enjoys supporting children with their learning and development in their younger years. She loves planning engaging activities within the school forest for the children to explore and play. This enables them to develop their love of the outdoors and their gross motor skills by climbing, swinging, digging and building.
Mrs Roome provides invaluable support to the Reception class here at Haslington. She has more than 10 years’ experience working as both a class teacher and a Teaching Assistant. Her favourite subjects are computing and science which is due to her background in industry prior to teaching. She takes great pride in her nurturing approach and is passionate about inspiring every child to achieve their goals and be the very best version of themselves.
CURRICULUM INFORMATION
Our Early year Foundation stage is a fun and enjoyable place to be with many interactive and engaging activities for our children to access. We aim to provide a broad, balanced curriculum both indoors and outdoors, where the children are excited to learn every day.
The children’s own interests and fascinations are very important to us in Reception Class. We have a flexible long-term plan with broad themes to ensure curriculum coverage. Alongside this, when the children are learning through play, we observe their interests carefully. We incorporate those interests into our planning, allowing the children to take ownership of their learning. For example, if we observed children building rockets and pretending to visit the moon this may prompt a Space topic. We carry out ‘mind mapping’ activities with the children in which they suggest questions, investigations and activities. We incorporate this into our planning which ensures the children have an engaging balanced curriculum.
PHONICS, READING & WRITING
Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language.
At Haslington Primary Academy we are a Read Write Inc school. Read Write Inc (RWI) is a phonics complete literacy programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at
Parent video: Introduction to Daily Read Write Inc. Phonics Lessons – YouTube
Language is a key focus when the children enter the Early Years Foundation Stage. The children enjoy daily rhyme time and helicopter stories, which help children to remember sequences and build on ideas.
To support early writing skills the children take part in Dough Disco and Squiggle sessions created by Shonette Bason-Wood. Children need to have strong muscles in their hands to enable them to write effectively. Doing these simple, fun exercises helps to improve the children’s fine motor control, gross motor skills and coordination which in turn prepares them for writing. Dough Disco involves moulding play dough in time to music and performing different actions such as rolling it into a ball, flattening it, putting each individual finger into the dough, rolling it into a sausage and squeezing it.
Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle uses dance and large movements to help children develop the fine muscle control they need for writing. They will learn a new gross motor movement to a piece of music. They will dance using this movement and use it to make marks. They will then use this action to think of letters they can form that use this shape. These sessions are great fun but most importantly help your child to be confident mark makers.
TAPESTRY
Here at Haslington Primary Academy. We use a digital learning journey called Tapestry where staff and parents can work in partnership to add observations, videos and pictures of learning that takes place both at school under home. The Early Years Team provide all pupils with log in details when they have started school.
General Information
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