Welcome to Reception!
Class teacher - Mrs Robinson
Learning support assistants - Miss Dawson, Mrs Aicha, and Miss Barranu (maternity leave)
SPRING 1
Welcome back Reception and Happy New Year!
I hope you had a lovely Christmas holiday and spent this special time of year having fun
and making memories with your families.
We have lots of exciting things planned for this half term which I am sure you will enjoy!
Key Dates
Our PE day is every FRIDAY.
Please ensure your child comes to school dressed in their PE kit on a Friday.
Please remember your reading book bag every FRIDAY
End of term is Friday 16th February at 3.10pm
and we return on Monday 26th February.
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 continue to 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 Spring
We continue to 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 half term is 'Space'
Literacy
In Reading we will:
In Writing we will:
Maths
In Maths we will continue to develop our subitising and counting skills and explore the composition of numbers within and beyond 5.
We will begin to identify when two sets are equal or unequal and connect two equal groups to doubles.
We will begin to connect quantities to numerals.
Children will:
• continue to develop their subitising skills for numbers within and beyond 5, and increasingly connect quantities to numerals
• begin to identify missing parts for numbers within 5
• explore the structure of the numbers 6 and 7 as ‘5 and a bit’ and connect this to finger patterns and the Hungarian number frame
• focus on equal and unequal groups when comparing numbers
• understand that two equal groups can be called a ‘double’ and connect this to finger patterns
• sort odd and even numbers according to their ‘shape’
• continue to develop our understanding of the counting sequence and link cardinality and ordinality through the ‘staircase’ pattern
• order numbers and play track games
• join in with verbal counts beyond 20, hearing the repeated pattern within the counting numbers
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 Spring term.
Come and See
Local Church - Community: Celebrating
Eucharist - Relating: Gathering
Lent/ Easter - Giving: Growing
Lenten reflection
Caritas
• God wants everyone to be happy.
• God gives us all we need to be happy.
• Making the right choices.
• We share all God's gifts.
• God's gifts are for everyone (food, clothing, education, medicine etc)
• Learning to share our toys and food with our friends so that everyone has enough.
• Helping everybody to be happy by playing, sharing and learning together.
• Using our gifts to help others.
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 Prayer and Liturgy 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.
• Jesus cared for others and wanted them to live good lives like him.
• We should love other people in the same way God loves us.
• To identify special people (eg. parents, carers, friends) and what makes them special.
• The importance of the nuclear family and of the wider family.
• The importance of being close to and trusting of ‘special people’ and telling them if something is troubling them.
• How their behaviour affects other people and that there is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.
• The characteristics of positive and negative relationships.
• About different types of teasing and that all bullying is wrong and unacceptable.
• To recognise when they have been unkind to others and say sorry.
• That when we are unkind, we hurt God and should say sorry.
• To recognise when people are being unkind to them and others and how to respond.
• That we should forgive like Jesus forgives.
• About safe and unsafe situations indoors and outdoors, including online.
• That they can ask for help from their special people.
• To know they are entitled to bodily privacy.
• That they can and should be open with ‘special people’ they trust if anything troubles them.
Understanding the World
Changes in the environment – seasonal/ decay
Caring for our environment - litter picking around school environment
Mapping – school grounds
Recognise some similarities and differences between life in this country and other countries
Celebrations
Interactions with natural processes eg- ice melting
Exploration of traditional nursery rhymes
Spring walk
Big Garden Birdwatch
Expressive Arts and Design
Artist focus: Jackson Pollock (My Beautiful Oops)
Explore, use and refine a variety of artistic effects to express their ideas and feelings.
Listen attentively, move to and talk about music, expressing their feelings and responses.
Develop storylines in their pretend play.
PE
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://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
First words sampler
Teach your monster to read
Maths websites
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?Subject=16&AgeGroup=1
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/topics/numeracy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/numberblocks
Maths Apps
Kids counting
Maths Tree
Bugs and Numbers
Busy things
Maths ages 3-5
Maths YouTube videos
Jack Hartman
https://www.youtube.com/user/JackHartmann
Monkey floss counting backwards from 20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hD26XpuUCc
2D shape song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTeqUejf3D0
3D shape song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cg-Uc556-Q
Numberjacks
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWKuiktSh-V3E4ysPU0VC3Q
Numberblocks
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPlwvN0w4qFSP1FllALB92w
Counting by 10s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gmEe0-_ex8
Counting by 5s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ4jV14Oz5I
El Nombre for number formation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB6RGn7x4ks
Money song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFzAU3u06Ps