Reception 2026-2027

Welcome to Pluto class 2026/2027. 

Class Teacher- Mrs Helen Bettiss

Class Teaching Assistant- Mrs Lyndsey Clark

PPA Teacher- Mrs Harney ( Friday morning)

PE Days- To be confirmed on INSET days

Our Early Years Classroom

A big welcome to our Reception class – where your child’s learning journey begins!

Starting school is a special time, and in Reception we create a calm, caring and exciting environment where every child is nurtured, supported and encouraged to explore, question and grow.

We work closely together to support your child’s emotional wellbeing, social development and early learning through a blend of play, exploration and structured teaching. Through the terms we explore different projects which engage the children.

Autumn Term 1 projects

In the Me and My Community project, your child will learn about the school community and building friendships. They will explore the school grounds and find out about all the people in school who are there to help them. They will explore how they are special and unique and how everyone’s family is different. They will take part in practical activities to support them to build new friendships and explore what makes a good friend. They will also find out about people in the community who help us, including doctors, nurses, and the emergency services.

 

In the Once Upon a Time project, your child will be introduced to the wonderful world of stories. They will listen to a range of traditional tales and have the chance to act out the stories in their play. They will also listen to alternative contemporary stories to see different viewpoints from the characters. They will use the stories to think about how life has changed from when the stories were written. They will also make up their own stories and make masks, props and puppets to act out their stories.

 

Drawing Club Stories 

In the first part of the Autumn term we will be looking at stories, tales and animaltion. Drawing club enables children to forster teit imagination, develop their communication and begin thier writing journey at their pace.

 

Some of  the books, tales and animations we will look at in the Autumn term are:

• Not now Bernard
• Ruby’s worries
• Leaf
• The three Little Pigs
• Billy Goat’s Gruff
• Pink Panther
• Bagpus.

 

Typical Daily Routine

-Morning activities/registration

• Phonics
• Drawing Club
• Continuous and enhanced provision ( Busy bee discovery time)
• Break
• Maths/Continuous Provision
• Lunch
• Topic based learning/PE/RE
• Collective Worship
• Reflection and story time
• Hometime

Phonics and Reading 

We passionately believe that teaching children to read and write independently, as quickly as possible, is one of the core purposes of a primary school. These fundamental skills not only hold the keys to the rest of the curriculum but also have a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances. Using our systematic, synthetic phonics program it will teach children to:

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences

In practice, children learn the 44 common sounds in the English language and are taught how to blend these sounds to decode (read) words. We start by teaching children to read and blend the Phase 2 sounds. Once they have conquered this skill, they start reading stories and texts that have words made up of the sounds they know. This means that they can embed and apply their phonic knowledge and start to build their reading fluency. Once secure, children learn Phase 3 and 4 and then read texts with increasingly more complex sounds and graphemes. Throughout this process there is a focus on comprehension, reading with expression and reading for enjoyment.

We regularly assess children so that they are taught in groups which match their phonic knowledge. We make sure that pupils read books that are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and ability to read ‘tricky words’; so they experience early reading success and gain confidence that they are readers.

In the Autumn term we will inially begin with a recap of tuning into sounds with Phase 1 and then by week 3 we will be starting phase 2. Children will learn three new sounds a week, 1 tricky word and then have a end of week review. The sounds taught during the week will come home with your child in their boook bags. Tricky words will be on a book mark in their reading record. Please lean these flashcard sounds at home.

sound mat

Ways you can help at home with reading

• Sleepy cat will come home each week with a different member of Pluto Class. This is a lovely way families can share stories with children in a fun , calm and engahing way.
• We encourage familie sto read to your child every day
• When books come home, we encourage families to try and read a little bit every night ( only 1-2 pages) or do some sound flashcards. Please do not feel you need to read the whole book in one night.

Maths

As a school we follow White Rose Maths. In reception we adapt these lessons to ensure every child can access Maths at their leavel. We use Karen Wildings’ approach also to support development of number sense.

Autumn 1: 

We will focus on

• Matching, sorting and comparoing objects, amounts. For example, which group has more in/less in.
• We will look at the numbers 1-3, The children will learn to recognise numerals, subitise and count these amounts. We will also look at early addition and subtraction within these amounts.
• The children will learn to find one more and one less than numbers to three using concrete objects.
• We will look at measures and patterns. The children will be asked to continue a simple AB pattern and even create theitr own. We will compare lengths using key vocabulary.

RE- Wht is the word GOD important to Christians.

In this unit The children will understand and learn to:

• That God is an important name
• He is like an invisible friend
• He created the world
• Listen to stories from the Bible
• Listen and sing Christian songs

Our RE units always link with our School Christian Values. This term we will focus on the following values.

Pluto Classroom Environment

Our classroom environment enables children be independent learners. Our room is set up with areas with resources they can use to create their learning. Come and take a look at our indoor and outdoor classroom.