Rec K 2019 - 2020

Welcome to Reception!

Welcome to Reception!

Welcome to Reception! We hope you had a lovely summer holiday and made lots of memories together. We have had so much fun during our first week in reception, making lots of new friends and getting to know our teachers.

This half term our RE topic is I am Special, we will be talking about what makes us special; our likes and dislikes, and how they make us feel and who is special to us. We will also be learning all about the Holy Trinity, and our school Mission Statement ‘Be The Good Soil’.

In maths we will be concentrating on developing our counting skills, saying one number for each item and remembering how many items we have counted. We will also be challenging the children to find the correct numeral and match it to the quantity. We will also be naming some 2D shapes and describing their properties.

In literacy we are reading Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs; as Harry’s favourite things are dinosaurs, we will be discussing our favourite things. Your child may bring a bucket home, we would like you to fill the bucket with their favourite toy, book or picture, and bring it back the next school day to show their class. In addition to a homework book, your child will also be given a reading book, they will be expected to read at home to an adult, at least twice a week. When you have read with your child, please write a comment in their reading record. The book and reading record should remain in their bag at all times.

We will be teaching a daily phonics lesson, this will focus on a five phonemes a week which the children to can apply to their early reading and early writing to further consolidate this knowledge. We are encouraging the children to hear and say the first sounds in words. We like to use robot arms when sounding out words. – Please continue to read at home with your child, we can see the progress they are making as a result of this.

This half term we will continue to practise our tricky words, these words are 'sight' words as the children must be able to recognise these words due to them not being able to be phonetically read. Our tricky words are:

We love to listen to and join in with the jolly phonics song - click on the link below!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0iFs5uF6w

Our Tricky words song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMyssfAUx0

ALL children will need their PE kit in school as we will be doing PE on a Friday this half term. Please also ensure you bring your child’s book bag daily as we don’t want them to miss out on school reading and trips to the library.

Thank you for your support,

Miss Kelly

Here are some little ideas how you can support your child's learning at home:

• Reinforce the sounds covered each day in class.
• Practise name writing. Please make sure your child uses lower case letters except for their initial letter.
• Share reading books, discussing plots, characters, and their feelings, as well as simply decoding the text.
• Draw your child’s attention to numbers in their environment e.g. telephones, door numbers, car number plates etc. Count things around the home. How many windows do we have etc?
• Encourage your child to dress themselves for school and take their uniform off at the end of the day to promote independence.

Recommended websites:

http://www.mrthorne.com/ - Mr Thorne has a channel on youtube dedicated to the pronunciation of sounds, called Mr Thorne Does Phonics

Similarly, you can also find the Alphablocks channel on Youtube, which will further support your child's phonic and sound knowledge.

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk - some free phonic based games

http://ictgames.com/literacy.html- more phonics games

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks - 5 minute videos which reinforce your child's phonic knowledge.

Recommended APPs:

Justin's World - Lettersounds: a super resource for teaching letters and sounds including reading, writing and spelling.

Doodle Buddy: a paint app which helps develop hand-eye coordination.

Bee Bot: an app which helps improve directional language (forwards, backwards, left right etc.)