Reception Class 2020-21

General Information

Mrs Board teaches on a Monday and Tuesday and Mrs Bettiss on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mrs Clark is our Teaching Assistant, who is in every day. Mrs Heron is also in Pluto Class on a Tuesday and Thursday morning.

PE is on a Thursday. Please ensure your child comes dressed to school in their PE clothes that day. As the days are getting colder, please can they wear some warm clothes.

Our Early Years Intent

It is our intent to ensure all children in the Early Years have an exciting, motivating and challenging curriculum. This will offer them opportunity to explore and investigate their own interests. In the Early Years, we implement this by having a rich, stimulating environment, allowing children to select their own resources and follow their path of learning. The children have continuous and enhanced provision, which is carefully planned for from observing and assessing their learning through play. The impact of this approach allows children to thrive, be happy and learn at a rapid pace, making excellent progress.

The children have been learning all about Autumn and Harvest time over the past few weeks.

Amazing Autumn

English

In our English lessons the children have been reading the story ‘Leaf Man’ by Louis Ehlert. Inspired by this story, the children made their own leaf man by collecting Autumn leaves and treasures. This week the children will be reading ‘Pumpkin Soup’ by Helen Cooper. We will be exploring the texture of pumpkins and coming up with intresting vocabulary. We will be using our knowledge of initial sounds taught so far to help us label the characters from the story.

Other areas of our curriculum

The children have been busy completing the following chilli challenges:

learning about woodland habitats
creating their own woodland habitats with a friend
exploring Autumn and looking at why things change
exploring printing by making leaf print paintings
printing with vegetables
making pumpkin soup
creating their own pumpkin potions

Phase 2 Phonics

In Pluto Class we do phonics every day. We spend two days revising sounds previoulsy taught and learning new sight words and then we spend three days learning new sounds. We practise hearing the sound, saying it, writing it and then blending by reading CVC words with that focus sound in. We have learnt the following sounds so far:

Set 1- s, a, t, p
Set 2- i, n, m, d
Set 3- g, o, c, k
Set 4- e

Next week we will focus on ‘u, r and h’

We will play blending games and use magnetic letters to create some new CVC words.

We also practise our handwriting and funky finger activities daily. Next week we will be focusing on name writing.

Maths

In Maths the children have been learning all about numbers. So far they have learnt:

1, 2, 3 and 4

Within learning about these numbers, they learn what they look like, learn about counting out amounts and learn about different representations of those numbers. The children have also begun the foundations of addition and subtraction, looking at how we can make up the number 4. e.g. 1 and 3 and 2 and 2. Alongside the numbers the children have learnt about corresponding shapes. For example when they learnt about the number four, we looked at squares and rectangles. Next week the children will be learning about ‘number 5’.

Pluto Chilli Challenges

Our chilli challenges are enhanced provision to encourage children develop their next steps and learning. Here are a few of our challenges that have been out over the past few weeks.

Useful websites

Espresso- Whole Curriculum

https://www.discoveryeducation.co.uk/

Username
student42593

Password
stm321

Super website that covers the whole curriculum. The phonics units are really useful. It also has excellent topic based activities for your children to explore, with useful video links.

Phonics Play

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

We use this website a lot in class and the children love playing Buried Treasure and Obb and Bob. This site is allowing parents free access over the next month. Year R focuses on Phase 2, 3 and 4. Phase 4 would be new to the children and would be something we would have been starting after Easter.

Topmarks- Great for Maths and Literacy games

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/

Twinkl

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/

Huge website with resources for everything. For the duration of the closures this site has been made free to parents. Lots of the resources require printing (if you have that facility) but it does also include online games and resources.

Reading

It is vital that reading is still a daily activity for your child. This includes hearing stories everyday and reading. Unfortunately we are unable to send home books over this long period. The website below is a great resource which has online books you can access at your child’s level. Please use the phonics flash cards daily to ensure they keep up with their sounds. Have fun creating new words and see if they can then make a sentence with that word.

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/

Books for Topics

If you need any guidance about what books your child should be reading check out

https://www.booksfortopics.com/early-years

Muddy Puddle Teaching – Outdoor learning

A great site for ideas, games and fun learning outside. This site has given free access for a month to all parents.

https://themuddypuddleteacher.co.uk/

Useful Learning Apps

Teach your Monster to Read

Some fun phonics games for your children to help them learn their sounds and tricky words.

You tube Links

Tricky Word Songs– The children sing these songs in class and love them!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMyssfAUx0

Simply Phonics- Focus on phase 2 and 3, you can search for the sound you want by entering ‘ simply phonics phase 3 ai’ and it will take you there.

https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=simply+phonics

Useful Websites for Phonics

http://www.ictgames.com/phonemePopLS_v2.html

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2-games.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/welcome/home/reading-owl/fun-ideas

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/phonics/play/popup.shtml

Useful Websites for Reading

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/reading-owl/find-a-book/storyteller-videos/

Useful Websites for Maths

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/3-5-years/counting

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Early-Years.html