Literacy is an integral part of learning and children in the Nursery at Bede’s are encouraged to develop a love of reading from an early age.

In our Baby Unit, babies from as young as three months are given the opportunity to cultivate a sense of sound awareness by exploring their environment.

Children learn their phonemes through the songs and actions of the “Jolly Phonics” scheme that has a focus on the pure sounds, which are crucial to learning to read and write.

Towards the end of Nursery, many of our children are ready to start learning to read and by the end of Reception, most children will have learnt their first set of key words and spell some simple, basic words with confidence.

Numeracy

Numeracy is also fundamental to a child’s learning and we help to develop basic concepts from counting and colour recognition to sorting and sequencing as early as we possibly can.

All of our Nursery rooms use an array of mathematical resources and offer a series of games and challenges.  A daily numeracy slot is timetabled into each of the year groups’ days through which the children are presented with a multitude of adult-initiated tasks that challenge the children to use and extend their mathematical skills through practical involvement.

As well as our timetabled numeracy slots, frequent use of simple mathematical language is reinforced through play both indoors and outdoors, with key workers consistently presenting the children with the sorts of mathematical challenges they will encounter in day-to-day life.

Bede’s Prep School has developed a strong reputation for innovative maths teaching and we strive to question and challenge the children even in these early days in order to aid their mathematical development and enable them to see that working with numbers is fun, exciting and rewarding.