Welcome to Reception's Class page!

"The child grew and became strong in body, mind and spirit."

Welcome to Reception Class page!

During the year we are getting to know your child, their abilities, gifts. learning styles and next steps. Every child is unique. With our help your child will learn key skills and knowledge, providing them with a firm foundation on which to build on, throughout their education. We will look after your child's mental health and support their wellbeing, as we ensure all children at St.Peter's learn in a happy, safe and inspiring environment. We will support your child in learning letter sounds, in order to read and write.  Reading is the key to education- we enjoy it so much! We also learn all about numbers up to 20, a variety of shapes and how to solve problems independently.  We learn about the local community and the wider world, developing your child's cultural capital. We will nurture your child in our Church of England school. We make sure that the learning environments are inviting and stimulating, both inside and out.  

Here are a few bits of information to help you:

• Children will have access to fruit and milk each day, although you are more than welcome to send in a small, healthy snack with your child. (Not a sugary or chocolate snack) Please remember that this cannot contain nuts or peanuts (including chocolate such at Nutella). 
• P.E. is on a Tuesday and children should come dressed in their PE kits on this day. 
• Home activities are sent out at the beginning of each half term and your child can choose which options they would like to complete- or all! It is not compulsary, but we do find that families enjoy engaging with the challenges that we set and they do consolidate all the learning in class. This can be recorded in the Home Learning book or on Tapestry. Children can bring the book in each week on Wednesday, if they wish to. I will send it back home on Friday. 

• We continue to have fantastic feedback from parents and I know you love Tapestry! Please keep posting observations from home too, as you are so important in your child's educational journey. Thank you to everyone who came to our recent workshops and parents evening, giving us such positive feedback. 
• Reception enjoy home reading books and also guided reading at school. We have some lovely books that have parent prompts and questions for you, to help you to use the book more than once. Your child can retell the story using the illustrations and learn new vocabualry. We have Oxford Reading Tree, Essential Letters and Sounds, Little Blending books, Project X and other Oxford press books that are closely matched to the phonics being taught in class. For example, as your child learns new letter sounds, the book they bring home will help to practise these. The book should not be challenging so that your child can read with confidence and devleop reading fluency. Please sign the reading record after each read and ensure your child reads their book around three times. This will help their reading immensely. 

This year, your child has completed a baseline assessment- simply a few activities that Mrs Harrison completed with them, individually. Please see the leaflet attached to tell you more.

Moving On

As part of our theme this half term we will be learning all about our emotions- feelings of anger, loss, hope and the transition to year one. We are using 'Pathways to Write' for our English carpet sessions and we will explore the emotive book;

'The Sea Saw'

We will also look at the story, 'The Invisible String' as we explore our feelings of excitement and anxiety around leaving Reception class.  

In maths, we will follow the 'White Rose' scheme as we continue to learn about early number and the principles of counting. The unit this term is 'on the move'.  We will recap number bonds again in depth, to ensure mastery of number bonds to 10 and 5. We will also partition numbers and problem solve. We are looking at numbers within 20, exploring the composition of numbers.  We will also explore measures, time and shape.  Have a look at the long term and medium term plans below and click on the white rose link here to find out more:   

https://whiterosemaths.com/resources?year=early-years

We continue to follow our successful Essential Letters and Sounds phonics scheme. Click on the link to learn the correct pronunciation of the letter sounds: https://youtu.be/UCI2mu7URBc

There is also some information here: Essential letters and sounds

Below is a Reception Timetable, so that you can see what we do every day! There are also plans for the year and a curriculum overview. Of course we add bits through the year and adapt it to meet the interests and needs of all learners, as we follow your child's next steps on their unique journey. 

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to speak to us by appointment or for a brief chat on the door. 

Mrs Harrison & Mrs Lever