Reception

Welcome to Reception!

Our teacher is Miss Kelly and our Teaching Assistants are Mrs Falber (Mon-Thurs), Mrs Munro-March (Friday AM) and Miss Brooks (Friday PM)! PPA cover is Mrs Stolliday on a Friday 10-12.

The Autumn term topic is...

'Epic Explorers!' 

School days are extremely busy, keep a look out on this page for some exciting highlights of what we get up to here in Reception class. Scroll down for plenty of photographs or click the hyperlinks for the different terms!

Dates for your diary:

13th November - Parents' Evening.

14th November - Parents' Evening.
11th December @ 2pm - KS1 Nativity Performance
12th December @ 10:15 am - KS1 Nativity Performance
14th December - Tea @ 2pm
19th December-Christmas School Dinner

Homework

Children will be taking home a reading book and reading log each week. Please ensure children have these in their book bags each school day. 

Children also have their own Tapestry Early Learning Journal online and remember you can add observations of your child from home which can count to appropriate assessment. Once children begin phase 2 phonics there will be a sheet stuck in the yellow homework books informing you of the sounds the children have learnt that week and a short activity for the children to complete at home. We hope this encourages your child to talk about their learning and hope that you feel a part of their learning journey too.

Phonics

At St Josephs we follow the phonics play planning structure which incorporates the joy of Jolly Phonics! The children love the songs and actions that they use to help them learn the sounds. Songs are on Youtube if you would like to have a look! 

Communication and language/Literacy

We are beginning our literacy learning based around Labels, lists and captions. There will be lots of chance to get to know one another by talking about our likes/dislikes, friends and family members. For this first area we are developing our pencil control through drawings and working on creating identifiable letters. We will be looking at initial sounds which will link in with our phonics too.

We then moved our learning onto postcards. We talked about the different features of a postcard and the purpose of them. We worked towards making our own postcards and went to the post box to post them so that the postman could deliver them to our homes. 

Now we are looking at Traditional Tales, the children have shown good prior knowledge to this topic and have been able name many Traditional Tales. We discussed what made Traditional Tales Traditional Tales and have began to look at one the children were not so clued up on and that was Hansel and Gretel!

Maths

In Maths we developing our number recognition through fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills. Our activities will focus on building mathematical language through practical games, songs and activities using concrete objects. We our building our place value skills in the first weeks to help us with out counting and ordering, then will begin to move on to comparing numbers and discussing the language of 'more' and 'fewer'.

We have also looked at 2d shape and money increasing their knowledge through using language to enhance children's understanding of those areas. 

Now we are focusing our learning on Addition and Subtraction and the children are learning various methods such as the part part whole approach.

Topic - History

Our driver this time for our termly topic is History therefore we are exploring historical figures linked to our Epic Explorers. Firstly, we are looking at Christopher Columbus and then will look at others such as Charles Darwin, Neil Armstrong, Robert Falcon Scott and the Three Kings.

Physical development

We are very lucky to have not one but two PE lessons a week. This term we are going to be taking part in Gymnastics and Parachute games in the hall. In gymnastics, we will explore different ways of moving, showing increasing control over time. We will gain confidence through balancing activities and using various equipment.