Welcome to Reception’s class page for Cycle 3
We had a fun and very busy Cycle 2 where we noticed lots of progress in learning, since then we have welcomed a new Teaching Assistant – Miss Robinson – who has already developed a lovely relationship with the children. This cycle we continue to learn primarily through play, exploring our areas which include: creative, investigation, role play, small world, maths, writing, reading, outdoors and our new ‘funky fingers’ area which aims to improve our fine motor skills which are very important for improving children’s writing skills.
We will also continue our focussed learning in short lessons:
- Phonics – where we work in small groups following the Read, Write, Inc. programme to develop our reading skills, learning sounds and building words using FRED talk. This is when children breakdown the sounds they see in a word and then blendthem together to read the whole word so c-a-t becomes cat, th-i-nk becomes think.
- English – we will focus on two books this cycle; ‘Yucky Worms’ by Vivian French where we will be going on a worm hunt and making a wormery, and ‘A Great Big Cuddle’ by Michael Rosen. In these sessions Reception are expected to use their phonics knowledge to build on their writing skills. We have been working on writing in sentenes, where the chldren are maing lots of progress!
- Maths – we continue to work in groups using a variety of resources such as number lines, ten frames during fun, practical activities to establish a secure understanding of number recognition, maths problems such as addition and subtraction, and ordering and comparing We will also be revisiting the shape, space and measure aspect of our maths curriculum.
Reception children are also continuing to enjoy time with the sport coaches every Thursday morning where they can choose to be involved in team games.
Reminders:
- Our reading day is Wednesday – please ensure your child’s reading book is in school ready to be changed and for your child to have one-to-one reading time with the teacher.
- Please also try to read at home as much as possible with your children, even a couple of pages a day is very valuable in enhancing their reading skills, please record this in their reading record to make us aware.
- Snack money continues to be a voluntary contribution of 50p per week.
- Parent afternoons have been a success so far and are a lovely way of spending time with your children in their school setting, as well as getting to know what we get up to here in Pearl class – our next afternoon session is Thursday 27th February.
- Spare clothes are required at school for each child if possible to ensure a dry set for any accidents – we wear waterproofs outside during wet weather but spares are often still needed.
- Wellies are required for each child to ensure the can still access the outdoor play area during wet weather,
- We ask that all children wear full school uniform – please ensure your children’s items are labelledwith their names to avoid misplacing of items.
- We are still using Dojos as a reward system, children are expected to earn 20 Dojos per week in order to be involved in a special Dojo treat on Friday afternoons.
- We continue to have three focus children per week. This gives us the chance to record information on paper to be kept in the child’s file in the classroom to evidence their learning. Parents can add to this by sharing photos to the Early Years email address. Examples of photos might be: a trip to the park, visiting family, swimming lessons. You will receive a letter when your child is selected as the focus child. During this week, your child is welcome to bring in something special from home that they would like to share with the rest of the class.
Thank you for your continued support,
Miss Harrison, Mrs Bagnall, Mrs Wroe and Miss Robinson.