Foundation Stage

Mrs Paris Finnegan

Mrs Finnegan is our Foundation Stage Leader

Welcome to The Foundation Stage!

At St Teresa’s, our aim is for all children in Foundation Stage to enjoy their first experiences at school. We aim to provide a safe, secure and fun learning environment to enable your child to become a confident and independent learner.

We have two classes in The Foundation stage; Tamar 1 and Tamar 2, which are used purely as a base for registration purposes. Outside of these times, the children merge and have access to all areas within the unit.

Our children are given the opportunity to learn, through play-based activities, both indoors and outdoors. Alongside these child-initiated activities, we have a variety of teaching inputs throughout the week. These include; two Maths sessions, two Literacy sessions, two RE sessions and a PSHE / RSE session. Each input is conducted in small groups pitched towards each individual child’s stage of learning. To further develop their understanding and work towards their next steps, each input is followed by an adult led activity.


The teaching of reading (synthetic phonics) is very important to us, so every child takes part in a daily phonics sessions and we read with the children regularly throughout the week.

The Foundation Stage Curriculum has seven key areas of learning.

These are:

  • Communication and Language
  • Physical Development
  • Personal, Social and Emotional Development
  • Literacy
  • Mathematics
  • Understanding the World
  • Expressive Arts and Design

We ensure that opportunities to explore key skills within these seven areas are provided through an enabling, exciting, and supportive environment.

The documents below details some of the skills and topics that are taught throughout the year.

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