Welcome to Reception

Spring 2 2026

Dear Parents,

Welcome back!  We hope you have all had a lovely time with your family and your children are ready to continue their learning journey.

We will continue working hard on our school values of Respect, Good Manners, Patience, Perseverance and Honesty and will earn dojo points for good behaviour, attitudes and effort. When your child models a super learning attitude, they will be placed on the golden crown.  If they stay on it for the rest of the week, they earn an extra 10 dojos.

Attendance

Thank you so much for working hard on getting your child to school every day.  Regular attendance helps your child build good habits, getting them used to the idea of getting up and ready for learning each day.  It helps your child build and sustain relationships with staff and make friends.  It can also help to ensure continuity of learning, with staff being more easily able to assess your child’s progress and identify next steps for them in accessing the curriculum.

Every moment in school counts, and days missed add up quickly. The higher a pupil’s attendance, the more they are likely to learn, and the better they are likely to perform as they progress through school. 

Staffing in Reception is:

Mrs May - Class Teacher 

Mrs Begum – Teaching Tuesdays and Thursdays

Mrs Patel – Teaching Assistant

Mrs Asmal – Teaching Assistant (Monday, Thurs and Fri mornings)

Miss Read - Special Support Assistant

Homework 

Please complete all homework which is set on a Friday and return completed books to school by the following Wednesday. Your child will have a timetable of homework activities, reading books and knowledge organisers to share with you each half term.  The knowledge organiser suggests activities for discussion to support your child’s communication and language skills.  

You can find links to useful websites in the websites star (above).

Parental support at home is vital in helping your child to progress.

PE

PE continues to be on a Tuesday morning so please make sure your child comes to school in their full P.E kit.  Please also ensure that earrings are removed on this day and long hair is tied up. The correct PE uniform is: yellow PE shirt, school green sweatshirt/cardigan, black PE shorts or jogging bottoms and black pumps or trainers.  Trainers are safer now that children are wearing their PE kit all day.

Our topic this half term is ‘How Does Your Garden Grow’

Communication and Language

This half term, we continue to learn new vocabulary, share stories and discuss events but will also work hard on connecting ideas by using a range of connectives. Adults model and ask questions to support your child to do this.  Please encourage your child to speak in full sentences at home so that this becomes more natural to them.  We will also focus on using talk to work out problems, organise thoughts, explain how things work and why things happen. The classroom environment and the provision within this, is planned to engage and promote talk between each other.  We encourage our pupils to work together to solve problems.  We support them to do this by modelling using problem solving words e.g.” I think…, Maybe you could…., It might be…., How about trying…., What would happen if…?”

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

This half term adults will support pupils to form positive attachments with both their peers and adults.   We will encourage them to speak confidently with their friends in order to develop these relationships further and also to be confident to approach adults.  We will also continue to work hard to show resilience and perseverance in the face of challenge, talking through problems and working out solutions.

We are continuing with the toothbrushing scheme and your child is working hard to use the right pressure in order to clean their teeth and not damage their toothbrush.  Remember - this is not intended to replace tooth brushing at home. Our aim is to help support and reinforce what you are already teaching your child. It is still important that your child’s tooth brushing is supervised by an adult at home, in the morning and last thing at night before bed.  Brushing before bedtime is especially important, to prevent plaque and food particles remaining in contact with the teeth throughout the night. 

Physical Development

The children have daily access to the outdoors and also a weekly PE session in the school hall.   We continue to provide opportunities for our pupils to develop the fundamental movement skills of rolling, crawling, walking, jumping, running, hopping, skipping and climbing but are also encouraging them towards a more fluent style of moving, with developing control and grace.  This half term we will refine our ball skills, developing competence, precision and accuracy.  In addition, we continue to develop the foundations of a handwriting style, which is fast, accurate and efficient. 

Literacy

In phonics, we are continuing to practise Set 2 sounds which are all ‘special friends’.  Your child needs to learn these off by heart and be able to quickly spot them in words.  This can become very tricky now we have introduced so many and therefore daily practice of all sounds previously taught is essential.  We will also be working hard to write short sentences with words with known sound-letter correspondence.  Daily whole class reading lessons will continue where we read simple phrases and sentences made up of words with known letter-sounds correspondence and also learn even more exception words (Red Words). 

Maths

During maths, we will focus on the staircase pattern and ordering numbers to 8.  We will also explore how some numbers can be made with 2 equal parts (doubles) and will be sorting numbers according to their attributes (odd and even numbers).   During continuous provision, we continue comparing length using the vocabulary long, longer, longest, short, shorter, shortest; comparing weight using the vocabulary heavy, heavier, heaviest, light, lighter, lightest and discussing capacity using the language empty, full and half full to describe how much is in a container.  We will also be composing 2D shapes using tangrams and pattern blocks before moving on to recognising and building with 3D shapes.

Understanding the World

During dedicated talk time, we continue to discuss the seasons with a focus on spring and continue to understand the effect of the seasons on the natural world around us.  We will also talk about the lives of people around us and their roles in society.  Through our book-based curriculum we continue to compare and contrast characters and environments from stories so that the children recognise environments that are different to the ones in which they live.  We continue to look at life in Africa with a particular focus on the plants/foods that are grown there and how they are different/similar to plants grown in England.  We continue to fill in a weekly timeline and learn to understand the past by discussing events that happened last week or last half term.  We will also continue to learn about how different people may have different beliefs to us and look at how they celebrate special times.

Expressive Arts and Design

This half term, we continue to sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs daily.  Our pupils love singing as we walk to ‘big school’ and back.  Adults will encourage your child to build on prior knowledge with regards to creating art and models and will challenge them through the resources provided and through questioning and commenting on their work, supporting them to not only use and develop previous skills but also teach them new skills as needed. We will continue to give opportunities for creating collaboratively where friends can share their ideas, resources and skills.

As always, we hope your child has an amazing half term being the best that they can be. 

Stay healthy, safe and happy! 

From all the Reception team: Mrs May, Mrs Begum, Mrs Patel, Mrs Asmal and Miss Read