Alderbrook Primary School

Curious, Tenacious, Collaborative
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A typical day at Alderbrook

We operate a 'soft start' to the school day where pupils can arrive anytime between 8:30am and 8:50am. During this time they can have a free breakfast bagel and engage in a calm activity to start the day. 

Early Years

Each child begins the day with a greeting and handwriting as a group. The children then move into small teaching groups for their phonics lesson. By 9.30, all children are ready for their own choice of activities. This is child-initiated learning where the adults facilitate and support the children to develop key skills. Throughout the day the children will also have a literacy lesson, based on the current theme and a maths lesson. These are no longer than 30 minutes for Reception and 20 minutes for Nursery. The rest of the day is filled with choosing exciting activities based on the Early Years Curriculum. Adults will support children in small groups or as individuals to challenge and extend their learning or to support them to consolidate previous learning.

During the week there will be further learning opportunities provided by specialist teachers including music, sports and swimming. Sometimes we will all dress up and have a themed day! Sometimes we will have a special visitor, such as, an author or a person with an important job in our community and sometimes we will immerse ourselves in a story so that we can relive it in our play! Our children have excellent outcomes by the end of the year and are well prepared for the transition to Key Stage 1. We finish the day by sharing our success, having a snack and reading a story together at 3.15 pm.

Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2

We start the day with either a Maths or an English lesson. English lessons are taught through ‘Talk for Writing’ which is a programme that we use in order to develop high level vocabulary and challenge the children to be the best writers they can be. Maths lessons are taught through the maths mastery approach. Maths lessons are fast paced and interactive and include exciting challenges. Phonics lessons, reading lessons, spelling, grammar and arithmetic lessons also take place alongside the foundation subject lessons which include: PE (including swimming), Music, Computing, Geography, History, RE, PSHE, Art and DT.  KS2 children also have a weekly French lesson. Mid afternoon, children have assemblies, mindfulness time and collective worship. The end of the school day at Alderbrook is at 3:20 pm when we then offer a range of after school clubs.