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Reception - St Mary

Welcome to Reception!

Class teacher - Mrs Robinson

Learning support assistants - Miss Dawson, Miss Barranu and Mrs Aicha

Welcome to Reception. I hope you have all had a fantastic summer and are ready to learn.

My name is Mrs Robinson and I will be your teacher this year. I am looking forward to getting to know you all and your families. We are going to have a brilliant time this year and learn lots of wonderful things,

as well as have lots of fun of course!

Key Dates

Our PE day is every FRIDAY

Please remember your reading book bag every FRIDAY

End of Half Term - Friday 20th October

The Reception gate opens at 8.35am and will be closed at 8.45am.

Please ensure your child arrives promptly to school each day.

At the end of the day, the doors open at 3.10pm.

Please arrive promptly to collect your child.

This term we shall guide and progress the children primarily in the 3 prime areas of the all 7 inter-connected areas of learning and development within the EYFS Framework.

These 7 areas are:

Prime Areas:

Communication and Language (Listening, Attention and Understanding, Speaking)

Personal, Social and Emotional Development (Self-Regulation, Managing Self and Building Relationships)

Physical Development (Gross Motor Skills and Fine Motor Skills)

Literacy (Comprehension, Word Reading and Writing)

Maths (Number and Numerical Pattern)

Understanding the World (Past and Present, People, Culture and Communities and The Natural World)

Expressive Arts and Design (Creating with Materials and Being Imaginative and Expressive)

Our Learning in Autumn

We monitor the children's progression through adult and child daily interactions, observations during

whole class, group, individual teaching and during continuous provision.

Our topic this term is 'Me and My Community'

Literacy

In Literacy, we will begin teaching the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Phonics scheme, specifically; segmenting and blending the sounds in words, reading words, captions and sentences and spelling tricky words as well as attempting to write our own phonetically plausible sentences. We move through the programme by daily phonics sessions where children have the chance to read and write the sounds. For more detailed information on the phonics phases please see the Little Wandle website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/ and click on the parents tab.

We will be doing lots of mark making in a variety of contexts and for varied purposes, encouraging the use of the letter formation as we learn them. We will be working hard on our speaking and listening skills, having paired discussions with our 'talk partners', telling our news and sharing lots of stories and rhymes. We will be using the Tales Toolkit approach ( https://talestoolkit.com/) to support shared narratives and independent story telling.

Maths

In Maths we will be building on previous experiences of number from home and nursery environments, and further develop our subitising and counting skills. We will explore the composition of numbers within 5, begin to compare sets of objects and use the language of comparison.

Children will:

• identify when a set can be subitised (instantly recognise small quantities without counting) and when counting is needed

• make different arrangements of numbers within 5 and talk about what they can see, to develop their subitising skills

• spot smaller numbers ‘hiding’ inside larger numbers

• connect quantities and numbers to finger patterns and explore different ways of representing numbers on their fingers

• hear and join in with the counting sequence, seeing that each number is made of one more than the previous number

• develop counting skills and knowledge, including - that the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ (cardinality); to be accurate in counting, each thing must be counted once and once only and in any order; the need for 1:1 correspondence; understanding that anything can be counted, including actions and sounds

• compare sets of objects by matching

• begin to develop the language of ‘whole’ when talking about objects which have parts

Religious Education

We use the schemes, Come and See and Caritas in our RE lessons.

Below is an overview of what your child will cover over in the Autumn term.

Come and See

- Myself

- Welcome

- Birthdays

- Other faiths

Caritas

God made me and loves me very much
God made me beautiful and all my friends beautiful
We show our love for each other
We thank God for loving us and our love for each other
My Family at home
My school family
We are all different and we love and care for each other
We love and look after each other because we are brothers and sisters in God’s family

As part of our Catholic ethos. we love to involve family life within our school life and may ask you for photos of special events or people, such as baptism, Christmas and other important celebrations to reflect upon in our weekly Collective Worship sessions.

RSE

This term we will teach RSE, using the scheme Ten Ten - Life to the Full. Below is an overview of the lesson objectives your child will cover over this term.

Understanding the World

Black history month

Children's unique qualities – similarities and differences

Toys – explore toy artefacts, timeline of toys –comparison of old/new, parents/grandparent visitor to talk about childhood toys

Mapping – EYFS area

Learning to use a Bee bot remote control toy

Talk about members of their immediate family and community

Occupations visit

Autumn walk

Expressive Arts and Design

Explore, use and refine a variety of artistic effects to express their ideas and feelings.

Sing in a group or on their own, increasingly matching the pitch and following the melody

Develop storylines in their pretend play

PE (Physical Education) in Reception will take place each Friday. Therefore, your child should arrive at school in their PE kits each Friday. They will not need their standard school uniform on this day as they will stay in their PE kits all day.

In line with our school uniform policy, your child’s PE kit should be as follows:

- Plain navy joggers (no brands or logos).

- A pair of trainers (velcro trainers if they cannot tie their laces independently).

- Your child can wear their usual white polo shirt and navy school jumper on a Friday.

Home Learning

Below I have listed the homework that we expect your child to participate in to support their learning and achievements in school:

Reading – 10 minutes a night

Listening to your child read for 10 minutes a night makes a significant difference in their progress and attainment. It helps them practice key reading strategies and skills, develop their comprehension skills and supports their overall fluency and accuracy, which are vital skills they need for the future. Every Friday an eBook will be assigned to your child’s online account based upon the sounds they have learnt in phonics that week. The children will have practiced this book in their guided reading sessions so will be familiar with the text. The purpose of them practicing it again at home is to become more familiar with these sounds and fluent when reading them.

Your child will also choose a reading for pleasure book. This is a book that you can both read and enjoy together and encourage reading for pleasure. This will be a physical book that your child takes home and they will be given the opportunity to choose and change every Friday. As it is a reading for pleasure book, it is not necessarily aimed at your child’s reading level, therefore can be challenging, which is why we are asking for an adult to read this and your child to join in where possible. The reading for pleasure book is important as it is how we will help build a love of reading together. Please ensure your child brings this back to school every Friday ready to change in our school Library.

Reading eggs – once a week https://readingeggs.co.uk

Reading eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities. Children love the games, songs, golden eggs and other rewards which, along with feeling proud of their reading, really motivate children to keep exploring and learning.

My Maths and Mathseeds – once a week https://mathseeds.co.uk/

Mathseeds is an online website that your child can use to develop pupils’ confidence and fluency in Maths and the interactive lessons provide step-by-step examples to break down learning into manageable chunks. The log in for this is the same one you use for reading eggs.

Phonics home learning – once a week

Please continue to practise the phonemes we have learnt using the weekly phonics sheets in your child's phonics book.

You can then practise these sounds further on fastphonics (www.readingeggs.co.uk/fast-phonics-games), which is the same log in as reading eggs.

Learning logs – Autumn 2, Spring 2 and Summer 2

Last year we introduced our project-based home learning to replace the homework board we previously used. Pupil, parent and teacher voice all showed that project based home learning was the preferred style of home learning as it gave children more freedom to learn about real life world events, share personal experiences and it has helped motivate them to engage in home learning as it is child managed. It encourages the children to be more independent, inquisitive and provides more opportunities for outdoor learning together. This can be completed in your learning log or a scrap book of your choice.

Instead of completing these every half term, we have reduced this to three half terms a year to make it more manageable. They will therefore be given out on the first Monday of Autumn 2, Spring 2 and Summer 2. We ask that their project is brought into school on the last week of that half term to share and celebrate with their peers. You will be given a sheet of paper that will be stuck in your child’s learning log that will outline what the project is and ideas of activities you can do.

Please find below lots of useful websites and links to great resources that can be used

to support your child's learning at home!

Government support for home learning for children aged 0-5 years - https://hungrylittleminds.campaign.gov.uk/

Phonics websites

Mr Mc is doing fun and interactive daily phonics lessons for children age 4-5. He focuses on new digraphs and has lots of different ways to revisit already learnt sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTcZnvuTeovlznioLRo0GOA/videos

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk

https://monsterphonics.com/games/

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3-games.html

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/5-7-years/letters-and-sounds

https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/literacy.html

https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

Phonics apps

Jolly Phonics Lessons

Meet the alphablocks

Read with phonics games