When Ione's family moved into the Hythe area of Kent from north-west England her eldest sister Molly joined Hythe Community School. While getting to know the school community, her mother Sally involved herself and her two younger daughters, Mia and Ione, in a range of family and learning opportunities offered by the school.
A few years later Sally decided to return to full-time further education to train to become an educational psychologist.
Ione followed her sisters. She started attending the toddler unit at the school when she was 26 months old. She soon became familiar with the routines and opportunities of 'school life' and was eager to join in. She settled quickly and confidently, making full use of the exciting learning opportunities in the nursery. Ione got to know all the adults who would be working with her when she joined the reception class because Foundation Stage teachers work across the nursery and reception classes.
Everyone at Hythe Community School believes it is essential that good links are made with parents from the outset. The term before Ione joined the reception class, she was visited at home by the person who was going to be her teacher. She attended the reception class for six sessions, along with a group of children who would also be joining it the next term.
In this way, she really got to know the other children and other adults in school and had a chance to find out about the kind of activities children did at school. She rapidly realised that school was very similar to nursery.
Indeed, the foundation team plan the curriculum together, following the interests of particular children and ensuring that they are all highly motivated and fascinated by learning.
When Ione started school in the reception class, she initially attended the after-school club, as Sally had begun full-time work that year. However, as one of the youngest children, Ione found the bustle of the club quite daunting.
The school was able to arrange for Ione to return to the nursery at the end of the school day, where she felt more comfortable among familiar adults and surroundings. Gradually she was integrated into the after-school club and as her confidence has grown she has been able to access the wide range of activities on offer.
In the Celebrating Young Children materials we see Ione in the reception class. We observe her involvement in a range of creativity activities - drawing the tortoise; engaging in sound pair work with a boy; making a collage with a friend - all accompanied by lots of discussion.
Creativity
Drawing is her particular passion. Ione has become a very talented artist and enjoys any opportunity to use her sketchbook in school.
Ione loves to play and learn everywhere she goes. The school is near the beach, which is used as a further resource for creative learning. In the DVD we see Ione, her teachers and a group of children from her class exploring the creative potential of the seashore.
Working alongside their teachers, a visual artist in residence and a poet, the children have used a variety of media to record their work. The photographs and poetry of the reception class children, which were inspired by the beach, were used in a national Creative Partnership exhibition that travelled the country in the summer of 2005.
Ione is now in year one. Mia is now in the junior school, but still uses the breakfast, after-school and holiday play schemes, while Molly has moved to secondary education.
Partnership
Carolyn Childs, headteacher of Hythe Community school, says, 'Our school is dedicated to bringing parents, carers and very young children into the nourishing life of the school.
'It is a happy, safe and stimulating place where all members of the community, adults as well as children, are valued as individuals and encouraged to work together.
'The services we provide for children include a full daycare nursery, a sessional nursery and an out-of-school club which offers a breakfast club and after-school care and activities.
'A wide range of community and family support services are also on offer, including stay-and-play sessions, baby massage, baby clinic and parenting groups, plus computer classes, basic skills classes, GCSEs and a programme of family holiday activities and trips.
'As part of our commitment to working in partnership with parents and carers, every child in reception and Year One has a diary. It acts as a special link between home and school through which children, parents and teachers are encouraged to share experiences with one another.
'Children and their parents are able to share the things that interest them with the teacher who, in turn, uses the information to develop learning opportunities for children around their interests.
'Ione's creativity has touched all areas of her learning and is a strong thread that runs through everything she does. She has enjoyed learning new techniques with the school's artist in residence, such as felt-making, clay work and digital photography. Her photographs were part of a national touring exhibition developed by Kent Creative Partnerships.
'Ione recently completed a drawing of "a lady blowing bubbles" which in its composition and execution is so skilful that it would be easy to think it was by a much older child. The lady has her arm bent and raised to her mouth, her pursed lips ready to blow and eyes looking up to the bubbles.
'In year two, children have journals in which they write for pleasure about anything they choose, or answer questions set by the teacher on subjects that interest them.
'The progress of all the children is assessed through highly refined tracking and profiling systems that have been developed in pre-school and continue into Key Stage One.
Smooth transition
'At Hythe Community School we value creativity very highly. It underpins and runs across the entire curriculum. Research evidence for Creative Partnerships, a government-funded initiative that brings the very best cultural practice into schools so the partnerships can result in creative learning, has validated the school's commitment to creativity.
'Our school has always had very high maths results in Key Stage One tests and teacher assessments. The school's teaching of maths has been judged as good. Through analysis of the children's talk during creative activity, it has been established that they are able to talk knowledgably about mathematical and scientific concepts such as shape, space, measurement, proportionality and dimensionality.
'Over the past year we have been working to establish an easier transition from the Foundation Stage to KS1. As a result, the curriculum in KS1 has become more flexible so that children's interests are still followed.
'The individual classes develop a range of questions around a theme, which they attempt to answer during the afternoon teaching sessions. All the children have a daily literacy and maths lesson which include all aspects of the literacy and numeracy strategy.
'There are opportunities for child-initiated learning daily and the classes can now learn outdoors in their own outside classroom as well as accessing the community resources in Hythe.
'Recently the year one class visited the local fish shop, where they encountered a shark. The role-play area in that classroom now has an undersea area where the children can dress up as divers and meet a variety of sea creatures and write up their experiences in log books. A giant shark's head is being created to stick out from a cave. The children have been to the local library to find books on sea creatures and have used the internet to research their work.' NW
FURTHER INFORMATION
* Celebrating young children and those who live and work with them is available free from DfES Publications (tel: 0845 60 222 60, email dfes@prolog.uk.com quoting ref. DfES 1211-2005 DVD
* The Foundation Stage Toolkit contains a CD, which includes a compilation of the children's stories and their drawings of the people who live and work with them. This is also available free from DfES publications (ref: 1198-2005 GCDI)
