Our Class:

Tehidy class is made up of our youngest pupils (from Reception to Key Stage 1). We have a very dedicated staff team who work very closely with our team of Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists and Speech and Language Therapists to set both group and individual programmes as required. We are proud of the relationships that we are able to forge with the youngest members of our school, and believe that the building of trusting and respectful relationships is at the heart of everything we do in Tehidy.

Our Curriculum:

Our teaching is approached through an Early Years model as this best fits the needs and stages of development for our pupils. Our activities are focussed around age appropriate targets for individual pupils which are taken from EYFS areas of learning. Alongside this, we use our own bespoke assessment methods such as Individual Education Plan targets to ensure progress encompasses all areas of the child’s development (we work very closely with families when setting these targets to ensure they are the most relevant they can be and to make sure we can work consistently across all settings). Our curriculum has a theme based approach using a wide range of stimulating activities and resources. We plan our topic around the children’s interests as well as current local and global celebrations. Within our weekly timetable, we use tried and tested approaches such as Attention Autism, Sensory Stories, Intensive interaction, TAC PAC and play based learning. Interaction, independence, social understanding, emotional development form a key focus for the school day and always underpins our work with each child. We pride ourselves on creating a positive environment and a happy and fun atmosphere, which promotes learning through exploration, curiosity and play.

Reading in Tehidy Class

In Tehidy class, we are working on the development of our pre reading skills. We endeavour to promote the love of stories and books, through sensory stories, music, song and rhymes. These sessions concentrate on children building attention, to support them engaging and support their speaking and listening skills, which are the foundations for pre reading skills. We are focusing on the phonics phase 1 scheme of letters of sounds, which includes environmental sounds, copying rhythmic patterns, exploring instruments and linking pictures, objects and sound, understanding these are the building blocks in their reading journey.

Reading within Tehidy is closely linked within all aspects of our everyday learning. We take on a child led approach, attuning to our children interest and include these within a child led, play based approach.

In Tehidy, reading is linked to every aspect of our learning journey. The majority of the class of are working at phase 1 – of the letters and sounds scheme, meaning we are exploring sounds, rhythm and rhyme. Additionally using choice boards, how to interpret photos and signs, another component in early reading development.

As a team we are always open to reading and enjoying a range of stories, we use puppets, role-play, repetitive verse through cross-curricular learning; we make it fun and exciting and use as many elements throughout the EYFS to incorporate our love of stories.

Learning Environment:

We are very lucky here at Curnow to have variety of learning environments that provide quality spaces for children to undertake learning activities. Our classroom provides varuous methods and resource to support individual needs, freely accessible to support independence and included in all engaging activities and learning sessions to include each child.  We have our own balcony, outside play areas, which includes a trampoline, slide and other physical equipment, an outdoor learning space for more focused outdoor learning activities. We have a beautiful sensory room, a movement room, a learning pod, teaching kitchen, library area and the school hall, all of which are easily accessible for every child within the class. We use the outdoor learning areas as much as possible as we recognise the positive effects that being outside can have on the children’s wellbeing and engagement. We timetable these shared areas in which enables us to teach children in smaller groups and 1-1 at various times. Whenever possible we also enjoy spending time with our friends from Illogan School and we embrace the ethos of ‘Two schools, one community’.