Lower School

At Falcons Prep Richmond, we have been lucky to have had the opportunity to create our own Early Years curriculum and classroom from scratch and have developed this from an understanding of how children learn. This has enabled us to create a spacious, bright and open-ended indoor and outdoor environment where the boys can lead their own learning with access to a range of carefully selected resources. These include resources aimed at developing literacy and mathematical skills, at supporting creativity with free access to paint and collage materials, a role play area with the focus on communication and language development and construction area which includes logs sawn by the children in Forest School. We are academically ambitious for our boys and as the boys engage with these resources and take part in individual and group activities, they are supported, guided and challenged by staff with an understanding of child development.

In the Early Years at Falcons Prep Richmond, we aim to harness each boy’s natural curiosity as they develop through a range of playful learning experiences and opportunities. Our small class sizes enable us to get to know each boy and how they learn as we support them to make progress and to discover their individual talents, interests and personalities. We endeavour to foster happiness, confidence and kindness as our boys develop a positive attitude towards learning as well as building the strong foundations so vital for their education. We place a strong emphasis on the development of the whole child, where their reading, writing and maths skills are developed and challenged alongside their capacity to imagine, create, question and understand and accept others. In addition to this, we are fortunate to take advantage of the modern facilities and specialist teachers on offer at Falcons Pre Richmond, which give the boys the opportunity to experience science firsthand in our lab, computing in the Innovation Hub and sports at Richmond Rugby Club as well as specialist teaching of music, art and French. Our five Falcons Learning Habits place a high priority on the development of the dispositions which make a successful life-long learner who is prepared for an ever-changing world. These are curiosity, courage, independence, resilience and the ability to reflect on their own learning. These are encouraged through whole school initiatives, interactions in our classroom, outdoor area and Forest School which we visit on a regular basis.