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Reception

Reception's Christmas Hymns We hope you enjoy listening to the children singing Christmas Hymns.

Welcome to Reception! We are 'St Mary's' class.

Spring 1 2021

Welcome to our Reception class home page. We have two Reception classes- RFC and RK.

The Reception Team

The Reception Teachers are: Mrs Farrell, Mrs Collins and Miss Knowles.

Learning support staff are: Mrs McEntee, Mrs Murphy, Miss Neale and Mrs Bailey.

The Early Years gate opens at 8:30am. The Early Years bubble (Nursery and Recpetion classes) will close at 8.40am prompt. If your child is late you will need to wait until all other mini school bubbles have closed before entering 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 2.40pm. Please arrive promptly to collect your child.

Remote Learning in Reception

Should it be needed for individual cases, information regarding remote learning can be found on our class Sway page on the school website under the Parents tab and then Home Learning Support. This folder contains learning activities for pupils who are absent for a few days as they are currently isolating awaiting test results (if well enough to access) or siblings of pupils who are required to isolate.

If the whole year group or an individual child needs to isolate for the recommended 10 days then we will contact you with further details about teaching and learning at home. We aim for this to be delivered through Seesaw.

There are also many home learning resources and support further down this class page.

Our main topic for Spring 1 is Dinosaurs and the Environment

We will continue to observe changes in our environment. The children will learn about recycling and the damage that can be inflicted on our environment when we don't care for it. They will also learn about dinosaurs. We will read lots of fact and fiction books about dinosaurs.

Dear Earth by Isobal Otter

Michael Recycle by Ellie Bethel

Dinosaurs and all that Rubbish by Michael Foreman

Dinosaurs love Underpants by Claire Freedman

The Dinosaur that pooped a Planet by Dougie Poynter

Dinosaur Roar by Henrietta Stickland

We will also learn about the Epiphany, Chinese New Year, Safer Internet Day, PancakeTuesday and Ash Wednesday.

Daily activities to complete with your child-

Daily writing practice - please encourage your child to attempt to write phase 2 and 3 tricky words. Encourage them to use their phase 2 and 3 sound mats to write words and short sentences. Please share any writing on Seesaw or Tapestry.
Daily reading practice - please continue to engage with daily reading with your child. 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. Going through the sounds and tricky words on the phase 2 and 3 phonic mats will also help your child with their reading.
Daily number/counting practice - Counting up to 5, 10 or 20. Using mathematical language such 'more' and 'less'. Encourage your child to point with their finger as they count out a group of objects. Encourage them to recount to check they counted accurately. Take away a number from a group of objects.

Maths

In Maths, we will be focusing on counting, one to one correspondence, number recognition and order. We will be making sets and starting to find one more and less. We will be exploring maths within the environment especially looking at shapes and measures. We will be sorting and matching, creating patterns and finding them around us. We will be building on the children's mathematical vocabulary around everyday maths concepts such as time and positional language.

Literacy

In literacy, we will continue to consolidate our phase 1 and 2 phonics and begin to teach phase 3 where we look at letter sounds and begin to use these to read and write simple words. This term we will encourage the children to write short captions and sentences independently. For more detailed information on the phonics phases please see the Letters and Sounds website (https://www.letters-and-sounds.com/). We will be doing lots of mark making 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.

PE (Physical Education) in Reception will continue to take place each Wednesday outdoors on the astro turf pitch. Therefore, your child should arrive to school in their PE kits each Wednesday. They will not need their standard school uniform on this day as they will stay in their PE kits all day.

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 Wednesday. The school uniform shop in Heaton Moor does sell St Mary’s PE hoodies. These are permitted to be worn on a Wednesday but please do not feel that you have to purchase one as the normal school jumper is fine.

Tapestry Online Learning Journal

This year, we will trial Tapestry, an online learning journal, in Nursery and Reception. Tapestry is a program which allows all children in our Reception classes to have a personal on-line learning journal which records photographs, observations and comments to build up a record of your child’s experiences during their time with us.

You will have secure access (via email address and password) to your child’s individual Learning Journal and, in addition to viewing our contributions, we encourage you to add to it by uploading photos and comments, or commenting on observations made by us. The safeguarding of our children is very important to us. Everything that is added to Tapestry will only be viewed by school staff using the program, and also yourself, using your own log in. You will only have access to your child’s Learning Journal and this cannot be seen by other parents. It is crucial that you do not share photos or videos from your child’s learning journal on social media or through other online platforms.

Tapestry will be a wonderful way of additional communication between staff and parents; enabling you to view your child’s experiences and comment on the posts, as well as share what you have been up to at home with school.

You should have received an email (the email you registered for Parentmail with) enabling you to log onto your account.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Home Learning

Book bags need to be returned each Monday. We will return them to you by the following Thursday. Please use your QR code to access our Seesaw home learning page. Please complete and upload at least one of the listed activities each week. The children love to share their home learning with the other children each Monday morning. 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 having any problems accessing your Seesaw account.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to speak to a member of the Reception Team.

Many thanks for your continued support

The Reception Team

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