Christ Church C.E. Primary School

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Our Reception Class

A very warm welcome to our Reception class page.  In Reception, our children start their journey by settling into school life and begin to develop into confident, independent learners. I hope you find all the information that we send home useful and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask us. The staff are always on hand both before and after school and throughout the day on Seesaw.

Our Reception Class 2023-2024

Class Information

 

Who's Who

Mrs Gornall-Deputy Headteacher & Reception teacher

Mrs Baines- Higher Level Teaching Assistant

Miss Thistlethwaite- Part Time Teaching Assistant

Mrs Holmes- 1 to 2 Teaching Assistant 

Mrs Bayatti- 1 to 1 Teaching Assistant

 

Communication, Language & Literacy Development Information

The Reading Schemes we use in Reception are:                              

  • Floppy's Phonics & Pearson Phonics Bug (Individual Home Reading Books)
  • Read, Write Inc (Guided Reading Books)

 

 

                     

 

The Phonics Scheme we use in Reception is:

  • Read, Write Inc                                                                                           

 

Find out more about Read, Write Inc here

 

 

Reading books
All children will be provided with a reading book with words once they have learnt half of the RWI Set 1 sounds and are able to segment words and blend sounds independently.

 

Homework

At the beginning of Reception your child has been given a homework toolkit (Stripy zip bag) which was kindly paid for by Friends of School. This is to be kept at home and is to be used to help your child complete their homework. Please can you ensure that all the items are put safely back in the bag each time they are used as these need to be used throughout their time in Reception.

Please can you make sure that Homework is returned to school by Thursday morning, so that they can be updated and sent out again on a Thursday evening. Thank you.

 

Seesaw
Seesaw is our observation and assessment app which is used daily in class to record evidence for your child’s learning journey throughout their year with us in Reception.

Don’t forget to send Mrs Gornall observations from home through Seesaw, as it is extremely important that parents are able to contribute to their children’s learning journeys just as much as the practitioners.

         

Requests
Please can you help!!! We are constantly trying to add to our resources and are always on the look out for the following items: Comics, magazines, prams, dolls, small world toys such as farms/train sets etc. scooters, bikes, jigsaw puzzles, games, dressing up costumes etc. If you are having a clear out  please could you check with Mrs Gornall whether we could use any items before throwing them out. Thank you.

This half term.... Spring Term 2 (February - March 2024)

 

Over the next half term our topics will include:

  • Feelings (1 week)
  • During this topic we will discuss the different emotions that we experience throughout our lives and possible reasons for them. We will also discuss the different ways to control these especially the negative emotions.
  • Animals- Pets, Farm & Zoo (3 weeks)
  • Each week we will learn about a different group of animals. We will start the topic by learning about the types of animals that make good pets and how these animals need to be cared for. We will then move onto looking at the types of animals that live on farms, why they live there and the different types of food that they provide us with. Finally we will learn about the types of animals that live in the wild, but are commonly found in a zoo and discuss whether it is right to keep them in enclosures.
  • Easter (1 week)  
  • During our Easter topic we will learn about the events that take place during the Easter story and why this story is important to Christians. We will also make lots of Easter related items such as Easter cards, baskets, decorative crosses etc. 

 

During our Literacy time our learning will focus around the following texts:

  • What makes me happy?
  • The Great Pet Sale
  • Duck in a Truck
  • Dear Zoo
  • The Easter Story

Before the holidays we were becoming great writers and most of us were beginning to write our own simple captions, so we will continue to work on this in preparation for writing simple sentences in the Summer term.

In RWI we will use the Set 1 letter sounds that we learnt during Autumn term to further develop our blending and segmenting skills and to read and write simple sentences independently, as well as learn the new Set 2 sounds- ay, ee, igh, ow.

We will also have 2 new role play areas, indoors will be a Vets complete with reception area, waiting area, treatment area and pet care centre plus lots of furry friends and in our outdoor area will be a Zoo.

We are also hoping to take the children to a local vets, so that they can experience what it is like to work in a real vets.

 

In our Maths time we will continue to focus on the numbers 6-10 with the Numberblocks, Numberjacks and Numicon. Activities will include:

  • Number bonds to 10- Using a ten frame
  • Number bonds to 10- The part-whole model to 10
  • Subtraction
  • Exploring patterns- Making simple patterns
  • Assessment Week

 

In our Topic work we will be learning about:

  • Feelings- We will learn about the different feelings that we have, why we might feel like this and how we can control them.
  • Pets- We will discuss what animals make suitable pets, what things we need to look after them properly and how to make our poorly pets better.
  • Farm animals- We will learn about the different types of animals found on a farm, what adult and baby farm animals are called and what the places are called that each of these animals live in. We will also be learning about the foods that are produced by farm animals.
  • Zoo animals- We will explore the different types of animals that we can find in a zoo by using live webcams. We will learn why the animals are kept there and where in the world they come from. We will also use the internet to discover some interesting facts about them.
  • The Easter Story- We will listen to the Easter story and learn the real meaning of Easter.

 

Our RE will focus on the question ‘Why is Easter special to Christians?'

In this unit, pupils find out about the key events from Palm Sunday until Easter Day in the Christian Salvation story. They will find out about the Christian belief that Jesus saved his people from their sins by dying on the cross and rising again three days later. During the unit, pupils will encounter signs and symbols linked to the celebration of Easter and be able to talk about why these are important for believers.

 

Heartsmart- 'Don't rub it in, rub it out!'

This unit focuses on Forgiveness and learning how to process negative emotions, disappointment and hurt.

Don't rub it in, rub it out is about choosing to forgive, leaving the pointing finger in our pocket and accepting that we too need grace just as much as we give it away. Everyone makes mistakes. Don't demand perfection, instead celebrate progress, that's what loves does.

 

Our Wellbeing theme will be: Wellbeing Wednesday Monsters

Each week the children will continue to be visited by a different monster in Monstro-City who will bring a special message for the children. The children will be encouraged to look after their own well-being and mental health by learning tips and techniques they can continue at home.

             

During our Music sessions we will be developing our skills of listening and appraising and learning to find the pulse through the following units:

  • Wk 1- If you're happy and you know it
  • Wk 2- Pets
  • Wk 3- On the Farm
  • Wk 4- Down in the Jungle
  • Wk 5- Five Little Ducks

 

Our PE focus this half term will be 'Gym in the Jungle' and our School Sports Games Value will be ’Respect’

During this unit of work the children will learn how to:

  • Move in a range of different ways
  • Increase the ability to move around and onto equipment
  • Increase the ability to move under and onto equipment
  • Increase the ability to move over and onto equipment
  • Increase the ability to move through and onto equipment  

Dates for your Diary:                     

PE: Monday Afternoons (Outdoor Play) and Friday Mornings

Spring Term 1 NEWS!

We began Spring Term 1 by discussing our short term goals for 2024 and the things that we wanted to achieve this year. We then moved onto discussing our long term goals and what our hopes and dreams for the future were including what we wanted to be when we grew up. We then had great fun learning about Houses and Homes from around the world, which we linked with a selection of traditional tales. Inside the children loved playing in our DIY store role-play area, which was a constant hive of activity. They say that January is always a busy month for doing home improvements and that was definitely the case in our classroom!  Outside the children enjoying playing in our Arctic Explorers Base Camp where they were able to wrap up warm in their snow suits, hats and googles. They explored the Arctic environment (literally) on skis, before coming back and getting snug in their sleeping bags and bedding down for the night.  In our outdoor construction area the children used a range of different construction materials to build a variety of different buildings/shelters to keep them safe, particularly from that BIG BAD WOLF! Site safety rules were always followed and the children made sure that hard hats and high visibility jackets were worn at all times, well most of the time!!     

During our Literacy time the children learnt about traditional tales and what actually makes a story a traditional tale. They enjoyed retelling them using a range of puppets, masks and small world resources and became really good at using the repetitive language in stories like The Gingerbread Man, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Over the half term they developed their character voices and by the end were all excellent at taking on the role of each of the characters, particularly the Big Bad Wolf. For homework they recorded their own version of each of these stories and then uploaded them onto Seesaw. We listened to some of them in class, which helped the children to understand why traditional tales can sometimes be slightly different depending on who is retelling them.

Our Maths learning time focused on learning the numbers 6 to 10 and we discovered the different ways to make these numbers by combining different groups to find the whole number. We also continued to use Numicon to learn these numbers, problem solve and find different ways to make them. We used the story of The Gingerbread Man to learn about ordinal numbers and the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff to use positional vocabulary correctly. The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears helped us to learn about measuring things by size and weight and we even made some wallpaper by creating a repeating pattern with rollers and coloured paint. 

During our Afternoon learning time, we learnt about the different types of homes we live in, the materials they are made from and how these are very different from other homes found around the world. The children were shocked when they discovered that some people live in mud huts, which only contain a single room and no electricity or running water. We looked inside our homes, labelled the different rooms and discussed the types of furniture that we might find inside them. 

In our PE lessons we learnt how to control various sized balls with different parts of our bodies, sticks and rackets. By the end of the half term most of us were extremely good at this and had good control over them.

In our RE time we learnt about why the word God is special to Christians and discovered the Christian belief that
God created the heavens and the earth and the key events from the creation story found in Genesis 1. We also learnt that Christians believe Jesus told stories or parables about how much God loves them and found out what this means for believers today.

During our Heartsmart time we learnt that "Too much Selfie, isn't healthy" and that rather than always thinking about ourselves we should think about the people/creatures that are in our lives and show them love, because we all have someone we can show love to. 

The children also enjoyed many other exciting activities both inside and outside the classroom which helped to support their learning these included Mental Health Awareness Day, Chinese New Year and Safer Internet Day. 

Autumn Term 2 NEWS!

The 8 weeks leading up to Christmas were extremely busy in class and we learnt lots of new things through our Autumn, Light and Dark, Space, Dinosaur and Christmas topics.

It started with us looking at seasonal change and the signs of Autumn with the story 'Hedgehog Howdedo'. We enjoyed exploring outside, experiencing different weather conditions, collecting Autumn treasure and using it to help us with our learning. We discovered that some animals begin to go into hibernation at this time of year because they don't like the cold and that others are nocturnal and only like to come out when it's dark outside. We got really messy when we used clay to make our own hedgehogs and had great fun making our Hedgehog Hibernaculums out of the leaves we collected from our gardens. 

We really enjoyed reading the story 'The Bears in the Night' which helped us to learn lots of new positional language, as we worked together as a class to act out the story, all taking on a different role. We learnt about the sun and moon and discovered the differences between day and night.

When we read the story 'Whatever Next!' we were lucky enough to travel into space in our very own rockets, just like Baby Bear did in the story. We used colanders for our helmets, wellies for our moon boots and packed a picnic to eat when we landed on the moon.  Mrs Gornall turned our small world area into space and we created our own moon landing stories. We looked at different light sources and investigated how to light a bulb.

We particularly enjoyed learning about two new festivals which we had never heard about before- Diwali and Hanukkah through stories. We discovered that they were both festivals of light, but were celebrated by two different groups of people- Hindus and Jews. We enjoyed making our own Diva lamps out of clay and rangoli patterns on the computer, but especially enjoyed receiving a gift of golden chocolate coins in the Hanukkah money wallets that we made. 

We then moved onto learning about Dinosaurs and discovered what it would have been like on earth when the dinosaurs were in existence by reading the non-fiction 'My First Book of Dinosaurs.' We were amazed when we checked the CCTV and discovered that a dinosaur had visited our classroom and laid some eggs in a nest that we had created in our outdoor area.  We created our own dinosaurs through a variety of different creative tasks and enjoyed using a range of non-fiction books and search engines on the iPads to find out lots of information about them.

During our RWI learning time, we learnt the remaining Set 1 sounds and continued to develop our blending and segmenting skills to help us read and write more words. We also started to enjoy reading books with words for the first time.

Our Maths learning time continued to focus on the numbers 1 to 5. We explored lots of different activities in continuous provision which involved us trying to identify 1 more and less than a given number to 5 and also what two parts made each of these whole numbers. We also learnt the names of the different 2D and 3D shapes and the vocabulary associated with describing the position of something.

The children thoroughly enjoyed their PE lessons this half term, as they created their own dances that linked with the weekly theme and then finished off the unit with some Christmas Cheerleading.

Autumn Term 1 NEWS!

What a busy first 7 weeks we have had in school! We began our Autumn Term 1 by welcoming our new children into school and helped them to settle in and become familiar with our classroom routines.

Our first topic of "Ourselves" helped us to learn all about our bodies, what they look like both inside and out and we explored our 5 senses with lots of fun interactive activities. We learnt about our skeletons by reading the story 'Funnybones' and the different parts of our bodies by looking at a non-fiction book called 'All about me'. We also learnt about how we grow and change and what we will look like as we grow older when we read the story "The Elephant and the Bad Baby".  

During our 'Colours' topic we listened to the story of 'Elmer' which helped us to understand that it is ok to be different. We found out what happens when we mix colours and made repeating patterns with colours and shapes. We even had our own Elmer Day where we dressed up in lots of different colours and celebrated diversity.  The story of 'The Rainbow Fish' taught us the importance of friendship and learning to share with one another and we had great fun making our own yummy Rainbow Fish biscuits.

During our RWI learning time, we learnt over half of the Set 1 sounds and began to blend and segment these to read and write simple words. We will continue to learn the remaining Set 1 sounds after half term and start to enjoy a reading book with words for the first time.

Our Maths learning time focussed on the Numberblocks and learning the different Numicon shapes and numerals for the numbers 1 to 5. We explored lots of different activities in continuous provision which involved us trying to place them in the correct order. We also learnt how to count accurately by using 1 to 1 correspondence. Just before half term we learnt all about 2D shapes and went on shape hunts to find lots of different objects containing these shapes. 

During our whole class carpet times we enjoyed learning lots of new rhymes and songs, which we now sing everyday to help us with our daily routine.

In our RE time, we learnt that we are all 'Special' and that God loves each one of us as an individual. By looking at our fingerprints, we discovered that we are unique and God loves us that much that he has all our names on his hands. We found out that God is everywhere and looks after us everyday, no matter where we are or what we are doing. We know that God has a plan for each and everyone of us and as we grow and change that plan will change to. We also looked at what it means to belong to a religious group and that Christians welcome a baby into their family through Baptism.

During our Heartsmart Unit 'Get Heartsmart' we were introduced to the robot Boris and the nasty Scrapman and even made our own Boris' to live with us at home.

In Well-Being Wednesday, we were introduced to the well-being flock who taught us how to maintain a healthy mind.

As you can see from our pictures we had a great time taking on different roles in our Hairdresser and Hospital role-play areas and loved exploring all the different activities in our continuous provision areas both inside and outside the classroom.