Pre- Prep is an exciting and important year where your child makes the transition from the free flow learning in Reception class to a slightly more formal and structured routine where we start our journey following the National Curriculum.

We ensure that the children have plenty of opportunities to embrace play-based learning both in the classroom and in our wonderful grounds, promoting active engagement, depth of learning and motivation.

The children benefit from the support of a full-time teaching assistant and specialist teaching in Music, PE and Drama. Our small class sizes are hugely effective in providing a high level of focused teacher involvement with each child.

We place a great emphasis on consideration of others, courtesy, good manners and the ability to work and play as part of a team. We believe it is of great importance that our children have time to play, explore and develop their social skills as well as their academic ones. We encourage children to have respect for their friends and their surroundings and to develop their independence.

Pre-Prep creates a warm, nurturing, exciting and stimulating environment, where each member of the class feels a sense of belonging and the security to ask questions and share their ideas and thoughts with the group. We strive to create the perfect environment to foster a lifelong love of independent learning, self-discipline and responsibility alongside a sense of fun, exploration and discovery. This is achieved with a wide range of resources, stunning surroundings, appropriate questioning, activities that are tailored to the child’s ability, lots of praise, and appreciating and celebrating each child’s talents and abilities.

Our children follow a creative curriculum which allows them to explore, discover and apply a range of new skills through our topic work. We bring our topics to life on our class trips to Marwell Zoo, Hyden Farm, The Petersfield Museum, Bracklesham Bay and Southsea Castle.

Homework, whilst important remains very informal at this stage. However, it is expected that each child reads for around 10 minutes per evening in a relaxed atmosphere and practises their weekly spellings.

In Pre-Prep we encourage a love of reading and all children read to an adult every day. The children enjoy this special one-to-one time with an adult to talk about the books they are reading, practise using their increasing phonics knowledge and share their own views and feelings about the story and characters. We aim to provide our children with all the opportunities and experiences they need to equip them with a full and life enhancing education, always mindful our school ethos, ‘where every child is known and valued’.