Reception Class
Teachers: Mrs Karen Green (Mon- Thu) Mrs Anne Smilie (Friday)
Teaching Assistant: Megan Harris
Welcome to Reception
Taking your child to an early years setting – information for parents
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Learning Organisers
Learning organiser 1a Wonderful Me
Learning organiser 1b Autumn Magic
Learning organiser 2a Home Sweet Home
Learning organiser 2b Who’s Hatching
Learning organiser 3a Down at the bottom of the garden
Learning organiser 3b Let’s Tinker
Click here for the Oak news
At St Blaise children are admitted, usually in the September of the year in which they turn five, into the Oak Class. Statutorily children must attend school from the age of five unless home-schooled. For further information on admissions please see the Policy, under the Policy Tab.
The majority of our children enter school having attended the on-site pre-school, Red Dragon; others come to us from local nurseries. We work closely with Red Dragon to ensure continuity of learning throughout the Early Years. Children benefit especially from our shared knowledge of their skills and needs. This joint planning and collaborative working leads to a smooth transition for children into Reception and an ability to focus quickly on children’s next steps. Planning for, and sharing, our excellent outdoor-learning resource is a particular strength.
A good understanding by staff of the needs of young learners, in particular independent learning, is embedded fully into our EYFS practice. ‘Learning Journeys’, ‘Challenges’ and children evaluating and reviewing work, are particular elements of this practice.
A significant part of the Foundation Stage is to support children to develop the skills to learn. The ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’ are the ways in which the child engages with others and their environment. They underpin learning and development across all areas and support the child to remain an effective and motivated learner. These characteristics are:
- Playing and exploring – engagement
Finding out and exploring, playing with what they know, being willing to ‘have a go’;
- Active learning – motivation
Being involved and concentrating, keeping trying, enjoying achieving what they set out to do;
- Creating and thinking critically – thinking
Having their own ideas, making links, choosing ways to do things.
At St Blaise children are awarded Achievosaur Certificates to encourage the development of these characteristics. Click here: Achieveosaurs
Help us to celebrate your child’s achievements: Star-Moments
DO TRY THIS AT HOME – Ideas for you to do with your child to support learning: Tinkerlab
The Early Years curriculum is planned through seven areas of learning these are:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Making Relationships, Self-Confidence and Self-Awareness, Managing Feelings and Behaviour
- Physical Development: Moving and Handling, Health and Self-care,
- Communication and Language: Listening and Attention, Understanding, Speaking,
- Literacy: Reading, Writing
- Mathematics: Numbers, Shape, Space and Measure
- Understanding the World : People and Communities, The World, Technology
- Expressive Arts and Design: Exploring and using media and materials, Being Imaginative
A close partnership with parents is important to us, to ensure the ‘whole child’ is understood and individual needs are met. For example: Learning Journeys are shared regularly with parents and parents are encouraged to add ‘stars’ to show achievements noticed at home. Termly stay and play sessions and weekly home school diaries are also very successful in supporting our links with parents.
The Early Years policy can be found on our policies page.
Guidance to your child’s learning and development in the early years foundation stage
PE and physical activity
The children will have PE every Thursday. Please ensure your child has their PE kit in school every day and please also ensure that the PE kit is clearly named. If your child has long hair, it must be tied up. If your child wears earrings please supply a roll of micro porous tape so they can be covered. This is essential for health and safety reasons.
Outdoor Learning
Outdoor learning is an important part of the Foundation Stage, it provides endless opportunities for learning about the world around us and the changing seasons. We regularly provide opportunities to learn outdoors in our Science Garden. We will focus on a many areas of the curriculum including Physical Development, Science, Understanding the World, Personal Social and Emotional Development and Communication and Language. We will be going outside all year, whatever the weather, so please make sure your child has wellie boots and a waterproof coat in school. Please also provide a hat, scarf and gloves when the weather turns cold. Remember, there is no bad weather, just the wrong clothes!!! Every Wednesday afternoon we go into the Science Garden for Outdoor Explorers, so please send your child into school wearing old clothes, we may get muddy!
Supporting your child at home
Each term the children are given an activity bag to take home. These are activities you can do with your child throughout the term. We would love to see what you do; your child might want to bring in their creations or you can send photos to the Oak Email. At the end of term we share the photos and the children talk about what they have done, I then print the photos and stick them in to the children’s’ Learning Journeys.
Google Classroom has lots of resources to support your child’s learning at home, so please have a look at the Oak Classroom.
Reading
It is really important to share lots of books with your child at home, talk about the story, asking what they liked about the story, talk about the characters and ask what they think might happen next. Good book talk helps develop comprehension skills.
We follow a phonics scheme called ‘Rocket Phonics’, this includes some helpful workbooks so the children can practise reading and writing sounds and words. Every child has their own Rocket Phonics login and each week your child will have access to a new e-book, so that they can practise and apply the new sounds they have learnt. We will send a text message each week to let you know which sounds your child has been learning so you can help support your child at home.
