WELCOME!!!

Brackenbury is a small infant school with a maintained nursery. One of the few schools in Dorset, providing this facility. The school was built in 1991 and so we can offer modern, purpose-built facilities, overlooking Chesil beach.

This is a caring, nurturing school that is committed to the development of the whole child. We want all children to be successful and achieve their potential in an environment that meets their needs.

Our nursery provides excellent facilities for children who will be four years old during the academic year. A fully qualified teacher and nursery assistant plan the learning based upon the Foundation Stage curriculum. We are very proud of the seamless transition from Nursery to the Reception class.

The school is an excellent environment for learning. The classrooms are stimulating, well-resourced and each one has an interactive whiteboard. For lots of reasons things can go wrong in a child’s life and they need more nurturing in order that they can achieve well and be successful. We have Rainbow Class that meets the needs of some children in a very homely, nurturing environment with a curriculum that meets their individual needs.

We believe that children have a right to feel safe and secure at school. We have devised these Golden Rules with the children and they are used throughout school by all members of staff. They help to promote positive behaviour and the children are reminded of them in assemblies, at lunchtime and playtime as well as in their classrooms.

As an incentive and reward for keeping the Golden Rules we have Golden Time every week. This happens in each class for half an hour and children are able to choose an activity. These are activities that are not usually available to the children on a daily basis. We have found this to be very successful and behaviour at this school is excellent.

Our Golden Rules:

• We help each other
• We are kind and gentle
• We listen to each other
• We are honest
• We respect each other
• We look after our school

We want all our children to do well and be successful. The Reception and Nursery classes follow the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage which covers six areas of learning – Language and communication, mathematical development, knowledge and understanding of the world, physical development, creative development and personal and social development. The Foundation Stage promotes learning experiences of the highest quality through play activities.

We follow the National Curriculum, in Key Stage 1, which tell us what must be taught. It is broken down into eleven subjects - English, Maths, Science, PE, Music, Art, Design Technology, History, Geography, ICT, RE. However, many of the subjects are taught together in order for them to be more meaningful and relevant to young children. We often organise the curriculum into themes such as ‘ourselves’ or ‘journeys’

We place great emphasis on the key skills of communication through speaking and listening, reading and writing. Children need to be numerate and be able to understand about numbers and counting and be able to appreciate the mathematical world around us. More and more use is made of Information Technology in our teaching and for assessment. All children have good access to computers and each class has an interactive whiteboard.

• Afternoon Club
• Fit Kids
• U.K. Club