EYFS | Gillas Lane Primary and Nursery School

GILLAS LANE OPEN DAY FRIDAY 17TH OCTOBER 2025

PROSPECTIVE PARENTS & CARERS ARE INVITED TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT EITHER DURING SCHOOL HOURS OR AFTER THE SCHOOL DAY - WE LOOK FORWARD TO MEETING YOU!

☎️ 0191 500 5956

📩 gillas.lane@aimhigh.co.uk

Welcome to Gillas Lane Primary Academy Early Years Unit

A message from Mrs Mossa, Early Years Lead:

Welcome to our Early Years page - we hope you enjoy finding out what our Gillas Lane Early Years Unit is all about.

Our Early Years Unit accommodates both Nursery and Reception children. Children can join our Nursery as soon as they turn 3 - this supports the development of learning within the prime areas, ensuring children are accessing an education setting as soon as possible.

We know our children and their families well. This guides us in identifying our priorities. We know that communication and language is important to our children’s development. For this reason, we invest heavily in speech and language training. We are a ‘Communication Friendly Setting’, accredited by ELKLAN and we work closely with NELI to implement whole class NELI in Reception, and Nursery NELI with Nursery children.

We know that the environment acts as the third teacher in our Early Years setting, and this is why we work tirelessly to ensure our Early Years is welcoming and calm. We pride ourselves in providing a home from home environment. Our environment is made up of ever-changing areas that grow with the children, their interests and their needs whilst also reflecting the current theme or seasonal link. We aim to present a range of inspiring, open ended invitations to play and explore in all indoor and outdoor areas.

Our bespoke, skills-based curriculum has been carefully written to suit our Gillas children. Our curriculum is driven by what our Gillas children need to thrive; staff are very mindful of the ‘why this, now’ when planning lessons, activities and areas. Our Early Years curriculum is linked to our curriculum school drivers: Rich Vocabulary, Raising Aspirations and Mental Health and Wellbeing. This contributes to a strong connection between the Early Years and school.

Gillas Lane isn’t just a school - it is the hub of the community. Our families rely on us to provide high-quality, consistent support for both them and their children. We know that building relationships with families is key to ensuring children thrive at school. Parents and carers are invited into school several times across the year. We host ‘Stay and Play’ sessions for our Nursery children and ‘Book Looks’ for our Reception children.

Our Early Years is the beginning of a very important journey at Gillas Lane and we know that getting it right at the start is paramount.

We'd love for you to come and look around if you are interested in your child's journey starting at Gillas Lane.

💙 Mrs Mossa & the Early Years Team

The School Day

Gillas Lane Early Years accommodates children from the age of 3 to 5.

Children can join our Nursery as soon as they are 3 years old and attend our Nursery session from 8:45am – 11:45am Monday – Friday.

Our Reception session runs from 8:45am – 3:15pm.

Each child is assigned a key worker when they join our setting.

Prospective parents and carers are enouraged to come along and visit during school hours to see the setting in action.

We are happy to show you around at any time, but to make sure we are available it is best to contact Miss Todd in the office to arrange an appotinment.

☎️ 0191 500 5956

📩 gillas.lane@aimhigh.co.uk

Environment

Curriculum

Our bespoke, skills-based curriculum has been carefully written to suit our Gillas children.

Our curriculum is driven by intent, implementation and impact; staff are very mindful of ‘Why this? Why now?’ when planning for lessons, activities and areas.

Our Early Years curriculum is linked to our curriculum school drivers: Rich Vocabulary, Raising Aspirations and Mental Health and Wellbeing. This contributes to the strong connection between the Early Years and school.

Plan Do Review

We use the ‘Plan, Do, Review’ approach to provide our children with meaningful play time and positive adult and peer interaction.

Children plan their play using a full sentence to share their ideas. They then carry out their plan within the EY environment.

During this continuous provision, staff become play partners modelling and encouraging high quality communication and language skills.

At the end of the session, children reflect on and review their learning while staff celebrate the children’s achievements within the play.

Phonics

As a school we use the Read, Write Inc phonics programme.

Children in Nursery take part in small group times focussing on early literacy skills in preparation for phonics teaching. In the Summer Term, Nursery children are then exposed to the RWI picture cards.

Children in Reception begin formal teaching of Read, Write Inc phonics from Day 1 of Reception.

The children learn a sound each day and are regularly assessed to ensure they are retaining these sounds. Children are then taught to blend sounds together and to begin reading words with these sounds in. Children who are not remembering sounds receive immediate support to ensure they don't fall behind.

We invite parents to our RWI parent workshop to support reading at home - look out on Class Dojo for dates and times!

Drawing Club

We have recently introduced the use of Drawing Club for our Reception children.

Children are immersed in a text, traditional tale or video clip each week. They are then taught high quality vocabulary alongside an action to support the understanding of these new words.

Lessons then focus on a character, a setting or an ‘adventure time’.

The children draw and write about this focus whilst talking about how they imagine their drawing coming to life and what it would do!

It's the most exciting time of the day in Reception as our children's imaginations run wild!

Speech & Language

We are now a ‘Communication Friendly Setting’ following our accreditation from ELKLAN.

Led by Mrs Burnhope, our Early Years staff are trained with ELKLAN, supporting children with speech, language and communication.

We also use NELI to support our Reception children and Nursery NELI to support our Nursery children.

Parent and Carer Involvement

Parents and carers are invited into Early Years and school several times across the year.

We host ‘Stay and Play’ sessions for our Nursery children and ‘Book Looks’ for our Reception children.
We hold termly parent consultations for parents and carers during our Stay and Play and Book Look sessions.

We invite parents and carers into school to take part in Phonics Workshops so that children can be supported with developing their reading skills.

We stay in touch with our parents and carers using the Class Dojo app.
Parents can see what we are getting up to as well as being able to send and receive direct messages to and from staff.

Home Support

We pride ourselves in being there for our families and supporting them wherever we can.

Staff are available to speak with each day, including the Headteacher and Early Years Lead / Assistant Headteacher.

Any staff who work with our Early Years children will be connected to your Class Dojo. This includes support staff, Senior Leaders and our SENDCo.

We also have a Family Worker who can offer support around attendance and Early Help.

Our linked Health Visitor can provide direct support for individual children and their families at home. This may be focused on toileting, sleep, diet or health.

We ensure that our linked Health Visitor attends termly Stay and Play sessions to connect with parents face to face.

The Health Visitor is also available to recommend other outside agencies to support with any other home issues.

Early Years Success!

In May 2025, Rt Hon Bridget Phillipson MP delivered the Key Note Speech at the Reception Year Quality RISE Conference.

In it, she praised Gillas Lane for their dedication to, and success with, developing Speech, Language and Communication.

Take a look at what she said below: