Reception - Learning journey morning

Hello everyone,

On Wednesday 8th February we will be having a morning where you are welcome to stay a bit longer in the morning. Your child's learning journey will be out on the tables for you to have a good look at as we appreciate that there is not always time in parents evenings. The learning journeys are a fantastic record of pretty much everything we get up to in reception and it is fantastic to talk to children about their previous learning! There will be an opportunity for you to write down what yourself or your child thinks about their learning journey too. Doors will open at the normal time of 8.45am but you will be welcome to stay until 9.30am if you are available. We will be doing future sessions like this on different days as we appreciate that parents work!  We look forward to seeing as many of you as we can!

Reception team

Reception - Big Write!

Hello everyone,

This Friday the reception class will be undertaking their first 'Big Write'! This is an initiative used across the school and is aimed at encouraging children to use all the skills and strategies they have been learning in class in ONE piece of writing. In reception this may take the form of labels, lists, initial sounds, phrases or sentence writing, as we enable every child to participate but with a suitable level of challenge. As you may be aware we have been learning about Chinese New Year and we are going to use the Dragon character from the 'Great Race' story to inspire us in our writing. All the children have been busy creating their own dragons over the last week and we will continue to develop this over the coming week. 

At home, it would be fantastic if you could talk to your child about their dragon and ask them questions about him/her: name, looks, colour, special powers, where they live etc. All of this discussion will come to help on Friday when we set about our writing! Thank you!

Reception team

Reception - writing home learning

Hi all,

For a piece of home learning this week I thought a writing challenge would be appropriate! This is unrelated to our current topic of Chinese New Year and is just something for you to have some fun with at home if you would like to! Please bring in your efforts as we would love to see them!

How many words can you make out of these sounds:

s, c, p, a, e, o, g, h, m, d, t

We'll look forward to seeing how many words you come up with. Bonus for the longest word and the longest list of words. Children can write down their words in a list. Good luck!!

Reception team

Reception - Sound pots

Hello everyone,

As mentioned the other day, we will soon be sending home a sound pot with your child. This will contain sets of two things: All the sounds we will cover for the whole year in reception. And all the tricky words we will cover for the year in reception. They can act as a great tool for helping children to remember and consolidate the sounds and tricky words we will have learnt in school. Some possible uses for them have been put below. We are aiming for you to have the sound pots by next Friday at the latest! 

• Simple flashcard use - going through each card and saying the sound/word.
• Hiding them around the house and asking children to find them.
• Having a selection spread out on the table and asking children to select a particular sound/word.
• Use the sounds to make words. I will place a list of suitable words on a future blog post.
• How many words can you make that start with the 'f' sound - alternate sounds. Or how many words have 't' at the end etc.
• Use them to support any writing that takes place at home.

I will post more ideas as time goes on. Any practice done at home is extremely helpful and we appreciate all the hard work you do! 5 minutes a day is more effective than 1 hour once a week.

Reception team

What's going on in Reception?!?!

Hello everyone,

A quick blog to outline some of the things that are happening over the next couple of weeks! The learning is definitely continuing and the children are certainly responding to our expectations! A big well done to everyone there as we continue our Chinese New Year topic.

In PE we've started learning a dance and will be continuing to do so up until half term. This is based on the story Handa's Hen. Also Hen related is a new story that we are learning to tell: The Little Red Hen. This is being taught to everyone using storytelling techniques and will result in all children being able to tell the full story themselves without any help! See how much of the story your child can remember now!? We have had a few practices now. It is coincidence that there are two hen themed things going on at the moment!!

Coming up this week is a session with the year 8 sports leaders! They will be coming in to school to run a one-off PE session with the reception class on Thursday! There will hopefully be some pictures up for you to see! Next week we are planning to run a joint morning with the Pre-school based around the topic of Chinese New Year. Also, next Thursday (2nd) is the day the school nurse is coming in to do heights and weights. You had a letter home about it last week with an 'opt-out' sheet included if you didn't want your child taking part. Please make sure we have that by next Thursday if that is the case! If you have any questions about this, please come and ask us!

Finally, we will soon be sending home a 'phonics pot' for you to use at home. More information will follow on this! 

Reception team

Group reading books...

Hello everyone,

Just a quick plea with everyone to ensure that children are being sent into school with their group reading book in their book bag every day. It is then helpful if your book bag is placed into your tray. We do change the days we do reading on and it is always handy to have in school for the occasions when we can listen to individual readers. If books are not returned then we do not have a full set and are not able to then use them with another group of children. Thank you for your help in this matter! Plea over.

Reception team

Chinese New Year!

Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone that came along to the parent information session this morning. If you missed the session and want to know what was discussed, please come and speak to us! Lots of the points will be included in the newsletter coming home tomorrow.

This week we have begun a new topic that will take us through to half-term: Chinese New Year. This is a great topic for learning about another culture and how they celebrate. We begun yesterday by looking at where China is and what the country is like. For the rest of this week we will be listening and learning the story of the Great Race! This is the story that decided the order of the years for the Chinese Calendar. In our new writing books we will be describing some of the animals from the race and in maths we are looking at 2D shape names and descriptions (sides/edges, corners). 

To begin the topic I have included some potential home learning ideas below. Home learnign is a fantastic way to help children hone their skills and as the old saying goes 'Practice makes perfect'. These ideas are for you to take as far as you would like to! As always, we do not expect them all to be completed! Please bring any home learning into school so we can share it. Thank you

• Write he names of all the animals that took part in the Great Race.
• Find out one fact about China and write it down.
• Make a Chinese lantern,
• See if your child can retell you part or all of the Great Race story (after tomorrow!)
• Play Chinese whispers!
• Write down what you would do if you had a pet dragon!
• Find out what the number 6 looks like in Mandarin!
• Find out what Happy New Year is in Mandarin.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Reception team

Parent Information Session Tomorrow morning!

Hello everyone,

It was lovely to be back in school this morning and see everyone. I have to say thank you to everyone for the card and gifts, they really were unexpected and very thoughtful! Thank you!

Back to business, this term in a term that tends to fly by and we cram an awful lot into it. Lots of information will be passed along tomorrow morning at the parent information session. Due to the hall being in use, it will be taking place in the year 1 classroom. If you are unsure where this is please do ask. As usual, it begins at 9.00am and will run until roughly 9.30am. If you can make it, fantastic. However, if you are unable to attend and would like to know what was discussed, please come and speak to me! I will strive to place the most important bits of information on the class blog too. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning.

Reception team

Paper and Card Recycling Assembly

Paper and Card Recycling Assembly
In our school assembly today, I talked to the children about the importance of us trying to recycle things, with a particular reference to recycling paper and card.
We talked about how paper is made from trees and then looked at a series of photographs that show what happens to "waste" paper when it is recycled and sent to a Recycling Plant to be made into "new" paper.

I encouraged the children to try to bring in any unwanted Christmas Cards and put them into our Recycling box. We are trying to collect as many as possible and keep a tally of exactly how many we manage to get. It would be very useful if your cards could be tied with an elastic band and the total number written on the front to save us from having to count them individually.

Many Thanks,
Duncan MacBean

 

Mr Gibson - paternity leave

Congratulations to Mr Gibson who became a daddy on the 25th December , a daughter, Lola!





Mr Gibson will be on leave for two weeks. Mrs Penny Fenwick is our 'cover teacher' for the Reception Class during this period, do introduce yourselves and please discuss anything as you would normally with the Reception team. The team are there to help and I know Mrs Fenwick will like to be told of anything which can ensure your child feels settled and happy in class.


Mrs Mewett