Guest Posted October 13, 2006 Share Posted October 13, 2006 What are the benefits of becoming a foundation stage unit in a primary school? I take this as where f1 and f2 join together am I right? Anyone else introduced this in a primary school after christmas or easter I am thinking of joining the 2 together to help with differnt ability groups Im thinking it would help the differnt vchildren what do you all think!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonyMouse_4544 Posted October 13, 2006 Share Posted October 13, 2006 We became a FSU a year ago (not such a big change for us as we were already an Early Years Unit in a Primary School) but there are definite benefits for both children and staff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonyMouse_79 Posted October 13, 2006 Share Posted October 13, 2006 I think its a great idea but have no experience other than many moons ago when children went into reception in the term after their 5 th birthday and there was no national curriculum! Nursery's then took the 3to 5s but in the nursery in which I taught they were lucky to get more than 4 terms, part time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 We have found since introducing our FSU that the standards on entry for Nursery chn to Reception are much higher than they were, especially in CLL and PSHE. It also eases transition from N to R year as the children already know all the staff. The fact that all the EYS staff are 'pooled' together works really well in terms of sharing ideas and expertise. There are some 'cons' in our setting at times, where I feel that the R age chn are missing out on aspects of investigative work to build foundations in Science, History,etc but I continually experiment with ways to address this 'gap'. The other 'con' is that because it looks like we have many staff, if someone is absent or on PPA time, it is expected that we will 're-shuffle' and manage without them, this means sometimes children miss out on focused activities. We also have different lunchtime to our N attached staff which doesn't help and we lose half of our staff when they go for lunch, we are currently trying to change to the same lunch times. The pro's do outweigh the cons and help make EYFS a distinctive phase within the school - we seem to be slowly gaining more power and getting our message through at long last!!! I would say go for it if you can, you may have initial teething problems but you will really enjoy the final result. It definitely helps with differentiation too as I will work on SS and ELg targets whilst the N staff link this to BTT and earlier SS, so the whole spectrum is covered thoroughly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonyMouse_4544 Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 Lunchtime was one of the things we changed before becoming a unit. The reception children have lunch when the nursery children go home. The drawback is we have different lunchbreaks from the rest of the school and as we dont have breaks some days we dont see the staff who dont work in the unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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