Reception

Our Reception children are taught by Mrs Hinde and their teaching assistant is Mrs Yeomans. In Reception we enjoy choosing our learning indoors and outdoors, following our interests. Starting with a story leads to us exploring different themes through a range of fun activities. We aim to learn a number of stories and rhymes off-by-heart over the year and look forward to performing them to you. Use the Tapestry application on your android device at home to see all the interesting things your child is involved in and how their learning is developing. Look out for our open parent sessions and remember our door is always open if you have any questions or concerns.

Owls Class – General Information

Welcome to Owls class!

As you enter the classroom, please put coats and bags on their pegs.  Water bottles and lunch boxes are placed on the trolley.  Book bags are put in trays.  Their first activity is to look at a book, complete a puzzle or have a go at their phonics or maths booklets in their tray.

Please let me know on a Monday morning what your child would like for dinner each week.

Please make sure your child has these things in school every day.

All items must be clearly named.

• water bottle
• wellies
• book bag with reading book and record in
• suitable coat for the season/weather (you may wish to provide your child with their own waterproof suit for messy outdoor play)
• craft apron (could be an old shirt or t-shirt
• P.E. kit
• a spare set of clothes on their peg

 Library books

P.E. and library time will be on a Friday afternoon. Please remember to bring back library books on a Friday so your child can choose a new book.

Reading records

Your child should have brought home a reading book and reading record. Please write in the reading record when you share a book together. At this stage, encourage your child to tell the story by talking through the pictures, answering questions about the story and recognising letter sounds and words.

Phonics in EYFS

Read Write Inc. Phonemes Pronunciation Guide

Phonics, the teaching of letters and sounds, has been shown to be the best way to start teaching early reading and spelling.

The first stage is for a child to be able to listen to sounds and tell the difference between them, for example a car driving past or a plane flying overhead. Then they can start listening for sounds in words and join in with making those sounds. Nursery rhymes and songs are a great way of encouraging children to listen for patterns, such as rhyming words and words starting with the same letter. Talking to children and positioning yourself so they can see your face is so important for modelling clear speech so they can copy the shapes their mouths need to make.

By the time they enter Reception, most children are ready to start matching letter sounds to written letters. We have a sound of the day. The children hear the letter name and sound, see how it is written, think of words with that sound in and practise writing the letter. When they children have learned a set of sounds, they can put them together to make words (sounding and blending). For example “p..a..t.” The final stage is being able to break a word into sounds (segmenting) to help spell it.

It is important to use pure sounds. We hope this video will help.

Some words cannot be sounded and blended. We call them ‘tricky words’. Reception children will be given these words on a book mark,  like ‘the’ and ‘go’ on, to help them remember these words.

We may send home activities for your child to practise. We hope the parents of children in Reception find the leaflet, ‘Learning Through Play: Letter and Sounds’ useful for ideas of activities you can use to support your child’s phonics learning. Please use Tapestry to let us know if you notice your child using their phonics skills at home in their reading and writing.

There are free games at www.phonicsplay.co.uk