Sherise Richardson

Current Position- Early Years Foundation Stage Leader, Key Stage One Phase Leader and Key Practitioner

SLE specialism–

  • Outdoor Learning in the Early Years
  • Outstanding Early Years Practise
  • Creative Planning and cross curricular links in the Foundation Stage
  • Leadership in the Foundation Stage
  • Tracking and Assessment in the Foundation Stage
  • Creative Curriculum in Key Stage One
  • Leading whole school Mantels and inspiring topic starters

Interests–

I thoroughly enjoy myrole as the Early Years Foundation Stage Leader and Key Stage One Phase Leader. I aim toinspireandencouragepassionandcreativitythroughouttheInfantsSchool, influencing enthusiasmwithin the staff and the children. My love of learning through play and the outdoors is at the heart of my teaching ethos and I believe all children should be exposed to meaningful, authentic experiences to extend knowledge and understanding and provide a rich resource for play and learning.

The Foundation Stageat Castle Hill has a very unique layout. In the foundation stage there are three classrooms which each represent one area; Literacy, Numeracy and CreativeWe view the indoors and outdoors as integral parts of one whole environment allowing children to move easily between the indoors and outdoors, giving opportunity for play to flow without interruption. The children can access any classroom at any time to explore their interests and feed their individual desires. We have created a unit that is interconnected and branding the outdoors as our fourth classroom means our children have an open-ended opportunity to pursue ideas in different areas, between resources and fundamentally between ideas.

My on-going aim is to provide an outdoor area which allows children to be active, creative and open-ended. I take great pride in providing a provision that allows children to demonstrate self–expression and exploration through play in the outdoors. The outdoor area is set up in a distinctive way and using an approach to promote independence, we have units filled with resources that are purposefully placed around the outdoor environment. There is a Construction unit, a Maths unit, a Literacy unit and a Reading hut. The resources in these units are only available outside and different to what is accessible inside the classrooms. These resources are a method to engage the children’s interests and allow the children to independently lead and extend their learning in the outdoor environment.

I believe what makes me an outstanding classroom practitioner is my passion and enthusiasm. I am motivated to fully engage the children and strive to be creative in my planning and classroom setting.