We have lots of adults to help us on our Reception journey. There is Miss Thindal and Mrs Kirkman who are our class teachers, and Mrs Pacey, Mrs Elks and Miss Paggett as our fantastic teaching assistants. Mrs Mears is our Early Years Lead.

At the start of the year, we spend lots of time settling into our new classroom, getting to know each other and having lots of fun playing and exploring together. Throughout this time, we will be learning our new class rules and routines. 

We use the Development matters framework to inform our curriculum planning, so lots of our learning happens through play as well as daily phonics, literacy and maths sessions. The classroom is set up daily with specific activities to explore alongside the adults and our friends. The adults will help to encourage and develop learning, problem solving, trying new things and extending ideas. There are always lots of fun and new activities to choose from which have been planned purposely to support progress and learning. 

Now that we have started learning Phonics, please ensure you practise the letter sounds with your child as much as possible. Each week we will share the new sounds we have been working on to help you. We are also learning to hear initial sounds in words as this is an important skill to have. This will prepare your child for when we begin to segment and blend sounds to read words.

It is really important that your child is having regular access to books, being read to, and being given the opportunity to tell stories as much as possible.

Your child will be allocated a reading book weekly and set a day that books will be changed. Please make sure book bags are in school every day and you bring your reading book back once it has been read 3 times.  We encourage you to read with your child every night as this will help to develop your child’s speech, broaden their vocabulary and will help them to become brilliant writers!

In Maths this year we will be learning all about number, shape, size and capacity. We mainly work with numbers within 10 but focus on the in depth understanding and composition of these. Please practise careful counting at home with your child and recognising numbers to 10.