Welcome to Leigh Academy High Halstow
High Halstow is a one form entry village school with just over 200 pupils. The academy has fantastic views and quiet surroundings, except from the sheep and goats that can occasionally be heard from our surrounding fields! In January 2018, we received a ‘Good’ judgement from Ofsted.
The school is merged with The Leigh Academies Trust, which provides outstanding opportunities for staff to develop and to work collaboratively. This supports teachers to offer high quality teaching and learning opportunities to all children.
Welcome to Grasshopper Class
Grasshopper Class is our Reception Class at Leigh Academy High Halstow.
The classroom is always busy but in a structured and engaging way. To the outside eye, it can look like chaos, but we can assure you there is a huge amount of learning going on. The hustle and bustle are a true sign that there are engaging inquiries, excitement, awe and wonderment happening within, not just within these four walls, but the vast outside space as well.
There are a variety of areas within the classroom that provide children with the tools to inquire and apply skills independently as the year progresses.
The most popular area of the classroom is the home corner. The home corner contains a variety of resources, such as baking tins, wooden spoons, saucepans, and china cups.
The idea is that children see the value in the resources provided. We are limiting our plastic toys to allow children to understand the wonder of real life items- how they may break if dropped, and how to play with care in mind. We are trying to create as many real life experiences to help aid roleplay and imagination stories. There are also some very fabulous hats and dressing up outfits to promote independent dressing skills.
The classroom is being continuously developed to meet the needs of all children. Currently, there is a self service playdough station, where children are encouraged to make their own playdough – this is to really develop fine motor skills, ready for writing. There is a construction area which is full of natural resources such as wooden discs and pine cones to help develop natural curiosity and spark imagination in play. We aim to promote children guiding and encouraging their own learning through curiosity.
There is a vast outside area, containing large wooden blocks, which are great for making stages, cars and boats. Children can choose to explore our woodland area, a great place for discovering creepy crawlies as well as our stage area which is great for making lots of noise using the musical instruments! Children can keep wellies in school, put on a waterproof and develop their creative and imaginative skills in the mud kitchen too!
Learning in Grasshopper Class
Leigh Academy High Halstow promotes the PYP style of learning. Each term, we look at a transdisciplinary theme. This is the basis for our inquiry learning. As a class, we will determine some inquiry questions to help focus learning. These questions will help develop our curiosity and interests to help us look at the wider world.
We provide a transition period in September, which really helps build up confidence and routine in the classroom in a staggered way. After children are settled in school, direct carpet lessons will be slowly introduced. They will be around 15 -20 minutes long. Little Grasshoppers do not like to sit for very long! Inquiry learning is linked with literacy and will help to develop a knowledge of stories, how to retell them and this will support the progression of literacy and communication skills.
Phonics is the next taught lesson of the day. This is how children learn to read and write. Children will learn a sound a day, and once they know and can remember some sounds, they will be able to blend them together to read! Our classroom is full of activities to help develop gross motor skills (big movements) and fine motor skills (small movements). These will help develop the children as they get ready for writing.
As Maths skills are introduced, we spend a long time looking at numbers 1-5, using the Numberblocks to help us! Counting is not just remembering how to say the numbers in order, but counting one by one using a variety of techniques.
Around these lessons, children get to use the inside and outside environment where they will be encouraged to apply these skills independently through child initiated time.
