What is going on in Reception?
Over the course of the school year, we will be adding some useful information to this page. You can find all the information you need, below, regarding our current learning within school this term and it may also include some handy tips and tricks to help your child at home or may be some useful websites for learning, related to our topics in class. Our topics do also try to follow the children's interests, so what you may be reading here is what Miss Ingham planned to teach, but curiosity may get the better of us and lead us down a different road!
Literacy
In Literacy this term we will begin our school year by trying to develop a love of reading and also teaching the children how we care for and handle books. We will be fostering this love of reading and then develop it to engage our children in some writing. This may be by mark making in the sand or creative areas or by exploring our writing area, which is fully equipped with different pens, pencils, colours and a vast range of paper for us to make our marks!
The books which we will be reading, will be a variety of picture books which include, but are not limited to, Funnybones, Owl Babies, The Three Little Pigs, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, CAKE!, Jack Frost, The Gingerbread and of course, many more!
Towards the end of the term, we will be implementing our phonics skills to begin to read CVC and CVCC words as well as working on our writing skills, first looking at the formation of letters and then building up to writing CVC and CVCC words as captions.
Phonics
Our phonics journey will begin by recapping Level 1, something which will be familiar to many of us from our nursery settings. We will be looking at environmental sounds, body percussion and using musical instruments as we also work on our speaking and listening skills.
We will then move on to Level 2, following the Twinkl Phonics Scheme, which has been approved by the DfE as a validated scheme. We will focus on four sounds over a week looking at the letters, how they are formed and also the sounds they make. As we move through the scheme, we will then be looking at segmenting and blending these phonemes in order to begin reading CVC and CVCC words.
Maths
In Maths, follow the Power Maths scheme. We will be starting the term with looking in particular at numbers 1 to 5. We will be exploring how they are formed, counting objects using 1:1 correspondence and also building up to subitising and then eventually looking to find one more and one less of numbers up to 5. We will also be looking at 2D and 3D shapes as well as our own spatial awareness.
RE
For the Autumn term, our focuses in RE will be Being Special: Where do I belong? and Why is Christmas special to Christians? We will be learning about how we can show respect to one another and how we can show that we care as well as beginning to identify what other people are feeling and showing them that they are welcome into our lives. We will also be exploring where we belong and how we know we belong somewhere (e.g. school, families, football clubs, dance schools etc.). As we approach Christmas, we will be learning about The Nativity Story and which special stories about Jesus are in the Bible, asking why we, as Christians, perform Nativity plays at Christmas time. We will also be learning about the special things Christians do at Christmas to share God's love and also learning about why we celebrate Jesus' birthday.
We will also be exploring Harvest and why we celebrate during a Harvest Festival as well as attending our own school Harvest Festival in church and being welcomed into the school community.
This term we will also be looking at the Christian Values of RESPONSIBILITY and SERVICE.
Understanding the World
This term our two chosen topics are 'Magical Me' and 'Let's celebrate!'. Our first topic will see us exploring lots of different aspects on how we are magical, from our bodies and bones to special people in our lives. We will be exploring our families, understanding that all families are different and unique, as are we, as well as looking at our family history (up to our grandparents). We will then turn our focus to our community and where we fit in, in our lovely little village of Littleborough.
After the half term break, when we change topics, we want to look at a wide range of celebrations. We will be exploring different types of parties, including birthday parties and then also looking at one of the biggest celebrations in the Christian calendar - Christmas. We will look at how Christmas is celebrated around the world but not before we have learnt about Diwali and also Harvest and Thanksgiving, which takes place in America.