Reception

Welcome to Reception

Autumn 2 2024

Dear Parents,

Welcome back after the half term break.  We hope you have all had a lovely break with your family.

This half term the children will continue to be reminded of 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 Smith – Teaching Tuesdays and Thursdays

Mrs Patel – Teaching Assistant

Mrs Sadia – Teaching Assistant (Monday mornings)

Miss Iqbal - 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 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 on the Brookhouse website.

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

PE

PE continues to be on a Monday 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 ‘Change and Time’

Communication and Language

We continue to listen to stories every day so that we can build familiarity and understanding.  This will help us to retell these stories either as a whole class or during role play when choosing our learning.   We will be working hard to articulate our ideas and thoughts by speaking in well-formed sentences.  There is a huge focus on learning new vocabulary so that we understand it well and can use it throughout the day.  Please ask your child to tell you about any new words they have learnt in class.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

This half term we will work on building constructive and respectful relationships by sharing and cooperating with our friends and peers and also listening carefully to adults and following instructions well.  We will learn how to express our feelings to others and how to discuss when we are feeling hurt or upset. 

This half term also begins the daily teeth brushing scheme.  It is important to stress that 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

We will continue to develop our fundamental movement skills of rolling, crawling, walking, jumping, running, hopping, skipping and climbing but will also develop a range of ball skills including throwing, catching, kicking, passing, batting and aiming.  We do this by having daily access to the outdoors and also during our weekly PE sessions.

Literacy

We will continue to learn Set 1 phonic sounds following the Read, Write Inc scheme.  Please encourage your child to say these sounds to you on a daily basis so that they can read them very quickly.  We will continue to blend these sounds into words so that we get better at reading short words and learn to read some common exception words (Red Words).  We will begin to spell words whilst learning how graphemes (letters) sit on the line.

Maths

In order to master number, we will continue to subitise different arrangements and identify when a set can be subitised and when counting is needed.  We will spot smaller numbers ‘hiding’ inside larger numbers, connect quantities and numbers to finger patterns and explore different ways of representing numbers on our fingers.   In addition, we will hear and join in with the counting sequence, and connect this to the ‘staircase’ pattern of the counting numbers, seeing that each number is made of one more than the previous number.  We will learn that the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ (cardinality) and that to be accurate in counting, each thing must be counted once.  We will also begin to develop the language of ‘whole’ when talking about objects which have parts.

Throughout the day, we will use 2D and 3D shapes to make pictures and patterns and begin to recognise the name for these shapes.

Understanding the World

During dedicated talk time, we will continue to discuss the seasons and how the natural world around us changes because of them.  We will discuss the weather on a daily basis including suitable clothing for that weather.  We will learn about how different people may have different beliefs to us and look at how they celebrate special times.  Whilst learning about family and communities, we will be comparing how Blackburn has changed over the years and discussing similarities and differences.

Expressive Arts and Design

During singing practice and within the classroom environment, we will continue to be introduced to a range of music across the world.  We will listen carefully, move to and watch dance performances, discussing how music makes us feel.  We will also sing songs and rhymes to help us to match the pitch.  In addition, we will use a wide range of resources to represent our ideas and to create individual pieces of work.

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 Smith, Mrs Patel, Mrs Sadia and Miss Iqbal