Reception - St Joseph

Welcome to Reception

Our class saint is St Joseph

Welcome to our wonderful St. Mary's RC Primary School Reception. In Reception, the children have lots and lots of fun . . .every day. Daily they are busy exploring the different areas in our classroom both inside and outside. This has provided great opportunities for the children to explore, discover and learn. Each day is different for the children as they explore various activities in both the indoor and outdoor learning environments. At St Mary's RC Primary School, children feel safe, seen, supported, curious and proud of who they are. We are honoured to share each child’s early years journey.

The Reception Team

The Reception Teachers are: Mrs Farrell, Miss Gerrard and Mrs Khan.

Learning support staff are: Mrs Hussain, Miss Glendon and Mrs Bailey.

Key Dates

P.E. Days

Monday am	Indoor P.E.
Friday am	Outdoor P.E.

Typical Day

Kind Reminders

The Early Years (Nursery and Reception classes) gate opens at 8:30am and closes at 8.40am. If your child is late you will need to enter the school through the school office. Please ensure your child arrives promptly to school each day.

At the end of the day, the doors open at 3.10pm. Please arrive on time to collect your child.

As in line with our school uniform policy, your child’s PE kit should be as follows:

Plain navy joggers (no brands or logos).
A pair of trainers (velcro trainers if they cannot tie their laces independently).
Your child can wear their usual white polo shirt and navy school jumper on a Friday. The school uniform shop in Heaton Moor sells St Mary’s PE hoodies. These are permitted to be worn on a Friday but please do not feel that you have to purchase one as the normal school jumper is fine.

Home Learning

Partnership with Parents

It is important for parents and early years settings to have a strong and respectful partnership. This sets the scene for children to thrive in the early years.
This includes listening regularly to parents and giving parents clear information about their child's progress.
The help that parents give their children at home has a very significant impact on their learning.
Some children get less support for their learning at home than others. By knowing and understanding all children and their families, we will offer extra help to those who need it most.
It is important to encourage all parents to chat, play and read with their children.

Book bags and reading books will be issued on a Friday. These need to be returned each Wednesday.

Within your child's bookbag there will be: a guided reading book, a library book and the weekly phonics activity.

You will have access to your child's QR code to access our Seesaw home learning page.

We use Seesaw to give you the opportunity to share photographs with the class bears, when it is your turn over the weekend.

We use Seesaw to upload maths home learning and the phonic words from that week.

The children love to share their home learning with the other children each morning so please upload anything your child is interested in. They especially like to watch video clips of their friend's learning at home.

Please see a member of staff as soon as possible if you are still having any problems accessing your Seesaw account.

Support at home

Suggested daily activities to complete with your child which will support and help to embed the learning we do within Reception:

Communication is key! Strong early communication skills enable children to express needs, regulate emotions, and engage in social play. Share attention with your child as often as possible, whether this is during their play or during a walk out to the shops; respond to what they share with you, expand or build upon what they have said and build upon it by adding more words to turn it into a sentence, hold conversations with your child that encourage extended back and forth interactions, giving your child time to listen, process and reply.
Gross motor skills activities- Gross motor skills are controlled movements that integrate a child's strength, co-ordination, stability, balance and positional awareness. Examples of activities to support this: Swinging, using playground equipment such as a roundabout, spinning cups, seesaws, slides, bouncing on a mini trampoline, using space hoppers, rolling around and down, riding bikes, trikes, scooters and scooter boards, walking on a 'tight rope' (a chalk line or skipping rope on a floor), playing Twister or hopscotch, yoga poses such as downward dog, plank, airplane, tree, dancer, warrior.
Fine motor skills activities - Fine motor skills are the ability to control small muscles in the hands, fingers and wrists to perform precise, coordinated movements. Examples of activities to support this: painting, using chunky chalk, using zips, using large plastic tweezers to pick up items such as pompoms, fastening buttons, using scissors to snip paper, kneading and modelling with playdough. Developing these skills increases independence and dexterity.
Regular name writing practice - please encourage your child to practice writing their first name, encouraging them to use an upper-case letter for their initial and lower-case letters for the other letters. Please focus on forming letters correctly and neatly. Please share any writing on Seesaw.
Letter formation practice - Writing words carefully sitting on a line, using the Little Wandle mantra phrase to support correct letter formation. When children write, it is important to notice how they hold their pencil/pen/mark making implement as we encourage a 'tripod' grip.
Pinch: Use your thumb and index finger to pinch the pencil about 1–2 cm above the tip.
Rest: Rest the pencil on the side of your middle finger.
Tuck: Curl your ring finger and pinky finger into your palm for stability.

Regular practice of recognition of the Little Wandle Phonics scheme phase 2 and phase 3 tricky words and regular practice of the phase 2 and phase 3 graphemes.
How to pronounce the Phase 2 and 3 phonemes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTe5_Em0BHQ

Daily reading practice - it is crucial that you engage in daily reading with your child; this could be through singing rhymes, poems and songs also as well as reading stories. It is really beneficial to read aloud to your child each day. This will prepare them to succeed as a reader. Bedtime stories are so valuable to encourage good future reading habits with your child.

Daily number/counting practice - Counting up to 10 and beyond. Sing number songs and rhymes. Using mathematical language such 'more' and 'fewer'-this could be done when playing or when preparing food together. Go on a number hunt around the home or outdoors-focus on identifying numerals 0-10. Order numerals to 5, then 10 and 20.

For more detailed information on the phonics scheme we follow, please see the Little Wandle website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/ and click on the parents tab.

We will be doing lots of writing in a variety of contexts and for varied purposes, encouraging the use of the letter formation as we learn them.

We will be working hard on our speaking and listening skills, having paired discussions with our 'talk partners', telling our news and sharing lots of stories and rhymes. We will be using the Tales Toolkit approach ( https://talestoolkit.com/) to support shared narratives and independent story telling.

Phonics websites

Mr Mc is doing fun and interactive daily phonics lessons for children age 4-5. He focuses on new digraphs and has lots of different ways to revisit already learnt sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTcZnvuTeovlznioLRo0GOA/videos

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk

https://monsterphonics.com/games/

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3-games.html

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/5-7-years/letters-and-sounds

https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/literacy.html

https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

Phonics apps

Jolly Phonics Lessons

Meet the alphablocks

Read with phonics games