Hard Copies
Hard copies of policies, reports and information shown on this website are available upon request from the school office.
Contact Information
The name, postal address and telephone number of the school, and the name of a person to whom enquiries should be addressed is:
Head Teacher : Mrs J. Toyer, Higham Ferrers Nursery & Infant School, Wharf Road, Higham Ferrers, Northants, NN10 8BQ
The School Business Manager is Miss G Wright
The school can be contacted on 01933 312904.
Admission Arrangements
Admission arrangements for the school in relation to each relevant age group at the school, including any arrangements for selection, any oversubscription criteria and an explanation of the process of applying for a school place is provided by following this link.
We also have a more detailed breakdown on Admissions, available here.
Ofsted - Reports
The most recent report about the school published by her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education, Children's Services and Skills can be found here.
School Curriculum
Detailed information on how we support the curriculum on a termly basis, for each year group, can be found under 'Curriculum' Files area on the sidebar.
Whole School Phonics and Reading
Phonics
At Higham Ferrers Nursery and Infant School we use a scheme based on Letters and Sounds to teach phonics. This links to our reading scheme. This scheme contains 6 phases:
Phase 1
Phase 1 falls largely within the Literacy area of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage. In particular, it will support linking sounds and letters in the order in which they occur in words, and naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet.
Phase 2
The purpose of this phase is to teach at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters. By the end of the phase many children should be able to read some VC and CVC words and to spell them either using magnetic letters or by writing the letters on paper or on whiteboards. During the phase they will be introduced to reading two-syllable words and simple captions. They will also learn to read some high-frequency ‘tricky’ words: the, to, go, no.
Phase 3
The purpose of this phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme (the additional phoneme /zh/ found in the word vision will be taught at Phase Five). Children also continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation in this phase and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions. They will learn letter names during this phase, learn to read some more tricky words and also begin to learn to spell some of these words.
Phase 4
The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.
Phase 5
The purpose of this phase is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant. Some of the alternatives will already have been encountered in the high-frequency words that have been taught. Children become quicker at recognising graphemes of more than one letter in words and at blending the phonemes they represent. When spelling words they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.
Phase 6
By the beginning of Phase Six, children should know most of the common grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs). They should be able to read hundreds of words, doing this in three ways:
- reading the words automatically if they are very familiar;
- decoding them quickly and silently because their sounding and blending routine is now well established;
- decoding them aloud.
Children’s spelling should be phonemically accurate, although it may still be a little unconventional at times. Spelling usually lags behind reading, as it is harder. During this phase, children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.
Phonics Glossary of Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
|
Adjacent consonants |
Two (or three) letters making two (or three) sounds. E.g. the first three letters of strap are adjacent consonants. Previously known as a consonant cluster. |
|
Blending |
The process of using phonics for reading. Children identify and synthesise/blend the phonemes in order to make a word. E.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap. |
|
Consonant digraph |
Two consonants which make one sound. E.g. sh, ch, th, ph |
|
CVC, CCVCC etc. |
The abbreviations used for consonant-vowel-consonant and consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant words, used to describe the order of sounds. E.g. cat, ship and sheep are all CVC words. Black and prize could be described as CCVC words. |
|
Digraph |
Two letters which together make one sound. There are different types of digraph – vowel, consonant and split. |
|
Grapheme |
A letter or group of letters representing one sound (phoneme) E.g. ck, igh, t, sh |
|
Phoneme |
The smallest unit of sound in a word. |
|
Segmenting |
The process of using phonics for writing. Children listen to the whole word and break it down into the constituent phonemes, choosing an appropriate grapheme to represent each phoneme. E.g. ship can be segmented as sh-i-p. |
|
Split digraph |
Two letters, which work as a pair to make one sound, but are separated within the word. E.g. a-e as in make or late; i-e as in size or write. |
|
Synthesising |
The process of using phonics for reading. Children identify and synthesise/blend the phonemes in order to make a word. E.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap. |
|
Trigraph |
Three letters which together make one sound. E.g. dge, igh |
|
Vowel digraph |
A digraph in which at least one of the letters is a vowel E.g. ea, ay, ai, ar |
Please click this link to download the Government's Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics guide.
Reading
At Higham Ferrers Nursery and Infant School we have a broad variety of reading schemes that we like our children to experience. Our schemes are arranged into colour bands, each of which are progressive. The colours start at pink (the easiest level) and go through to ‘free readers’ which are the highest level. In the early stages of our reading scheme there are books which focus on the same groups of letters as our Phonic scheme – Letters and Sounds. These readers provide a good structure on which our children can begin to segment and blend simple new words. As children become more accomplished readers there are opportunities for them to experience non-fiction texts, poetry books and other more complex fiction texts.
As well as hearing pupils read individually, our staff teach reading skills to groups of children. These weekly sessions are called Guided Reading. During the guided reading times, children are taught specific skills that allow them to develop a range of reading strategies such as using character voices during speech, discussing the impact of an author’s choice of vocabulary on the reader, understanding how to read punctuation in a text to give a certain atmosphere, answering questions about a story using clues from the text and much, much more.
Sex Education
There is no formal programme of sex education, but questions concerning the bodily functions, including reproduction, are answered as simply as possible, but always truthfully, as and when necessary. Copies of the policy are available from the school office.
Pupil Behaviour
When you combine our key values, which are Care, Respect, Share, Enjoy, Friendship, with a desire to be safe and secure at school, you will understand why, at Higham Ferrers Nursery and Infant School, we aim to ensure all children and each member of staff is treated equally in this respect. Above, in the menu bar, you will find the key aspects that we believe will ensure good behaviour and appropriate security of everyone at our school. Please take the time to read these pages and keep our children and staff safe and happy at school!
Our Behaviour Policy can be downloaded from the Key Files and Reports area of this page.
Safeguarding & Child Protection
Our Safeguarding & Child Protection Policy.
Pupil Premium Grant
Our Pupil Premium Grant information can be downloaded from the Key Files and Reports area of this page.
For more information about Pupil Premium click here
To apply for Pupil Premium click here
Sports Grant Funding
The government is providing additional funding to schools to improve provision of physical education (PE) and sport. This funding - provided jointly by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport - will be allocated to primary school head teachers.
Our Sports Grant Reports can be downloaded from the Key Files and Reports area of this page.
Inclusion
This is all about ensuring all children have equal access to good quality education and support, regardless of ability (and of course all other aspects, including race, colour, ethnicity and so on.) In this section we describe our practices to be sure that every child get the same level education.
Special Educational Needs
At Higham Ferrers Nursery and Infant School the special educational needs of children are identified by the class teacher through observation, testing, assessment and consultation with parents, previous school records and health agencies, e.g. school nurse, doctor etc, (particularly physical problems.) Children with additional needs are fully integrated into the life of the school. All children can access the whole curriculum offered. Specific supervision or additional learning support is provided for some activities and situations according to individual needs. Our Special Needs Policy has been written with the consideration of the national Code of Practice. A copy of the school’s policy can be downloaded from the Key Files and Reports area of this page and more information can be given by our Inclusion Lead if required.
Equal Opportunities
The school operates a policy of equal opportunities, within the framework of the Local Education Authority guidelines, which ensures that every child is given access to all activities regardless of gender, race or disability.
Disability Discrimination Act
At Higham Ferrers Nursery and Infant School we are committed to providing a fully accessible environment which values and includes all pupils, staff, parents and visitors regardless of their education, physical, sensory, social, spiritual, emotional and cultural needs. We are further committed to challenging attitudes about disability and accessibility and developing a culture of awareness, tolerance and inclusion.
Complaints and Concerns
From time to time parents, and others connected with the school, will become aware of matters which cause them concern. To encourage resolution of such situations the Governing Body has adopted the “Northamptonshire Model Complaints Procedure”.
This procedure is devised with the intention that it will:
- Usually be possible to resolve problems by informal means
- Be simple to use and understand
- Be non-adversarial
- Provide confidentiality
- Allow problems to be handled swiftly
- Address all the points at issue
- Inform future practice so that the problem is unlikely to recur
A copy of our complaints procedure can be downloaded from the Key Files and Reports area of this page.
You can also obtain this information from the School Office or from the Clerk to the Governing Body.
Charging Policy
From time to time the school needs to ask parents to help with the cost of activities such as educational visits. In this part of our site we describe what happens when we encounter such a need for parents to help in covering the costs for the activity.
Educational visits
All children will have the opportunity to go on visits. The educational value of all proposed activities and the health and safety of our children is carefully considered beforehand. Voluntary contributions towards the cost of these visits and activities will be requested from every family and if required can be paid in instalments (speak to the school office for further information). Each visit / activity will only take place if sufficient voluntary contributions are received to fund it. Please note that the school reserves the right to leave behind any child whose behaviour is a danger to himself / herself or others.
Please note a charge may be required for the replacement or repair of school equipment or property that is wantonly damaged, destroyed or lost.
Our Vision, Aims & Values
We place a great deal of importance on our our Vision, Aims and Values. we have a page dedicated to this topic which can be found here..
Governance
Our Governing Body information is very important and we have a page dedicated to this topic which you can find here.