Welcome to Oak Class! We are a Reception aged Resource Provision class with an intake of 12 children and a high adult to child ratio. Children attend Oak class 5 full days per week, starting at 8.45am and finishing at 3.15pm. Oak Class provides a calm, nurturing and welcoming environment where each child can access learning and develop and grow from their own individual starting points. Our highly experienced early years team strive to achieve the very best for every child and we have a wealth of experience in ensuring that children are set achievable and manageable targets that will help them to develop in all areas of life.
Developing happy, confident and capable communicators and learners is our main driving force and feeds into everything we do in Oak Class. Our carefully planned, calm learning environment offers children a wide range of opportunities to develop socially, emotionally, physically and academically. Our indoor space provides a variety of continuous provision areas for the children to access throughout the school day. We have communication friendly spaces, a reading corner, malleable area, creative area, water area, small world and construction. Opportunities to emotionally regulate and obtain sensory inputs are provided throughout the indoor and outdoor area. As well as providing opportunities for children to develop socially, the outdoor area provides many opportunities to climb, run, jump and have adventures in the trees. We share the outdoor area with Willow class and children from Oak class have the opportunity to interact with Willow Class, which provides further opportunities to develop social skills.
The adults work purposefully and mindfully in their interactions with the children. Your child will be assigned a key person who will get to know them extremely well. With the support of the class teacher, the key person will plan targets and next steps for learning for your child. The EHCP is used to create manageable targets which are shared and reviewed with parents and carers.
Staff use a range of strategies to provide a holistic, meaningful and balanced learning experience for each child. We use intensive interaction as a strategy to help children to develop their interactions, communication and shared attention skills. We use gestures, signs, symbols and objects of reference to communicate with the children. Social snack time and small group activities provide opportunities to further develop social interactions. Bucket therapy sessions help to develop attention. We work closely with other stakeholders to offer support in areas such as Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy etc.
Oak class has a small room where children can access learning on a 1:1 basis or small group/ key person group sessions. This room also has a smart board and speakers where children can dance and move to music.
Oak Class provides opportunities for sensory input that children can access independently throughout each session. We also plan for daily sensory experiences within our routine, for example activities to alert, organise or calm. Each afternoon after lunchtime play, children are invited to participate in relaxing, mindfulness activities, with the aim of developing self- soothing and regulation skills and helping children become ready to focus and pay attention.
Routine is very important in Oak Class. We use visual and auditory cues to help children with times of transition during the day. Oak Class has a bear puppet who greets the children daily. We have a welcome song and goodbye song to help signify the beginning and end of each day. A tambourine is used to signify transitions between activities and staff wear tabards at snack and lunch time to signify that this is a time when we join together to eat at our tables. Staff consistently use Makaton signs and widgit symbols to communicate and model for the children.
Oak Class provides a happy, nurturing learning space where children can learn and grow and achieve their potential.
We look forward to welcoming you to our setting!
