Welcome to Reception at Oldswinford C of E Primary

Where we ‘Believe, achieve and shine brighter together.’

The Reception team:

Mrs Preece (FSLion) and Miss Thomas (FSCrystal) with Mrs Hardy and Miss Carton.

Foundation Stage 2021

At Oldswinford C.E. Primary school we believe that the children’s time in Foundation Stage, the Reception class, is one of the most important times in their school life. This lays the foundation for their learning and development for the rest of their education. We work hard to nurture and care for the children and seek to make school an enjoyable and exciting place to be. Children will be able to free-flow through the two rooms and ‘middle area’ throughout most of the day they with children from both classes and make great friendships.

Curriculum

There are seven main areas of learning which are split into prime areas of :

• Communication and language development
• Physical development
• Personal, social and emotional development

Then we have ;

• Literacy
• Maths
• Understanding the world
• Expressive Arts and design

Each area of learning is implemented through planned purposeful play. This takes place through a mixture of adult led and child initiated activities. Play is so essential to help children relate to others, build their confidence, explore their surroundings, and think critically.

The progress the children make is assessed by 17 Early learning Goals.

What to expect in Reception

We have daily maths and phonics sessions as well as talk for writing and kinetic letters most days. We hope to put on a workshop in the Autumn term to show some of what we do.

The children have two P.E. sessions each week, so please make sure the children have had their earrings removed on those days. We will tell you the days when we get the new timetable. We shall not be beginning P.E. straight away so you have plenty time to sort a P.E. kit!

All children learn at different rates so we differentiate our experiences so all can learn effectively. Parents/Carers will be sent a dojo link so they can see weekly updates and photos of what the children are currently learning and experiencing. Always helpful when a child replies ‘we just played’, to a question about their day!

When children start school, they are given a book with no words, until they learn to blend letters together to make words. We have an online reading scheme we will discuss with you as the term progresses.

We will give you a named water bottle please make sure it is sent into school each day.

Before September

If over the summer, you are thinking ‘how can I help my child get ready for school?’ here are a few suggestions:

• Have a watch of the above video and have a chat about it. You will find all the photos od the environment.
• You can also help you child by encouraging counting anything practical e.g. red cars on the street or going up the stairs before bed.
• Let them have a go at getting dressed e.g. taking on/off jumpers and coats inc. fastenings- we are more than happy to help children but this gets tricky when 30 children need us at the same time!
• Looking at and talking about stories and rhymes will help build a wide-ranging vocabulary. We sometimes use Youtube to help us e.g. five little ducks, 10 green bottles, five little speckled frogs. Please be aware of adverts.
• Have a look at their name from time to time, can they recognise it or even have a go at writing it?
• Encourage children to use the toilet with as little help as possible- if your child has any difficulties using the toilets please let us know we will be happy to support you as much as we can.

Autumn Term 2021

The first two weeks our priority will be to get the children settled in school life, we will be spending time getting to know them, seeing what they can do, showing them around the classrooms and stopping for stories.

After this we will be starting with the topic ‘People who help us.’ We will be looking at one of many people who help us per week e.g. doctors, firefighters, dentists, cleaners etc. We will be learning about how these people help us and sharing stories to support this.

In RE we will be looking at the Christian faith and how God created the world. The children give their ideas and sometimes are asked to draw a picture in response to a story this gets collated into a class RE book.