Welcome to Red Class

Hello everyone, we hope you have all had a fantastic summer and are looking forward to starting your school journey in reception. This school year is going to be filled with lots of exciting learning and fun.

Our topic this half-term is ‘All about Me’. Throughout this topic we will be learning our new class routines and rules, as well as exploring our new classroom and outdoor environment. We will be learning all about ourselves and our bodies, senses and changes. We will be encouraging children to discuss their families, houses, religion and heritage.

Literacy and Maths

Once the children have settled in we will begin our more structured whole class lessons.

In literacy, we will be starting off by looking at nursery rhymes and our focus text is a story called ‘Hickory Dickory Dog’ focusing on Poetry and linked to starting school.  We will then move on to the comical and engaging ‘Dear Mother Goose’ focusing on writing to entertain. We will be focusing on Phase 2 sounds in our phonics lessons. We will be doing lots of work on hearing initial sounds in words and beginning to blend sounds together in simple words. We will also be learning how to retell different stories to others.

In maths, we are going to be exploring numbers to 3, sorting, ordering and comparing. We will talk about measure and patterns.

The wider curriculum

Understanding the world: We will discuss and celebrate the similarities and differences between all the different pupils in our class. We will be looking at, smelling, feeling and tasting lots of different fruits and vegetables during our Harvest festival.

Expressive Arts and Design: Our main focus in our creative work this half-term is learning how to draw simple representations of people. Our focus artist is Vincent van Gogh. We will be talking about and drawing our families as well as looking closely at ourselves to paint self-portraits. We will be encouraging children to choose appropriate colours when colouring and painting people. It would be great if you could encourage this at home too! Our role-play area this half-term is a home corner.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Our main priority this half-term is ensuring that all pupils settle happily into school life. We will be playing lots of ‘getting to know you’ games to help children develop the confidence to speak about themselves and to develop new friendships. We will be introducing children to our important school rules and ensuring that they become familiar with our school routines.

Physical development: Children will have an indoor and outdoor PE session which will focus on special awareness, negotiating space successfully, how to share equipment and take turns. They will practise new skills such as jumping, galloping and sliding.

Additional information

PE days – Tuesday and Friday. Please can children come to school wearing their PE kits on these days. Children will need their outdoor kit (trainers and joggers in the colder months). This should be an unbranded white t-shirt, black joggers/shorts in the summer months. They can wear their school jumper over this.

Nature school – Our nature school session will be every Thursday. Children should come to school wearing weather appropriate clothing, including a pair of wellies that can stay at school. Please ensure they have full length trousers and long sleeves to protect their arms and legs!

Class bear – We will be sending our Red class bear home from week 2. We choose a name as a class and the bear will spend the weekend at someone’s home alongside a book to write and include photos of the fun activities the children had. We look forward to looking at the bear’s adventures as a class.

Reading – children will bring their home reading books home starting from week 3. Please ensure book bags are in school daily with reading records updated with a comment to let us know when they have read at home. Our library day will be on Fridays. Children can exchange their book for a new one each week if they have returned their previous library book.

Homework will be sent home every Monday and will be due in the following Monday. Homework will consist of alternate phonics and maths activities and each child will receive a homework book to complete their work in.

If you have any queries throughout the year, please come and see us.

Best wishes,

Mrs Probert, Mrs Langley and Mrs Bradley.