Welcome to Reception!
April 2024
Welcome back to the next part of our learning journey at St Christopher’s. We are looking forward to an exciting term of learning with lots of fun things planned.
The children will take part in a wide variety of activities in both our indoor and outdoor settings, covering the 7 areas of learning:
Prime Areas
Communication and Language
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Physical Development
Specific Areas
Literacy (including Comprehension, Word Reading & Writing)
Mathematics (including Number & Numerical Patterns)
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design
The Reception Team
We are fortunate to have a number of experienced staff who will all play a part in your child’s learning during their year in Reception:
Class Teacher: Mrs Poole
Class Teaching Assistant: Miss Thorp (Mon – Thurs)
Additional TAs: Mrs Onions, Mrs Burns
Our topic for the next half term is:
‘Getting Bigger…Growing & Building’
Over the next few weeks we will be exploring:
- Spring & New Life
- Growing Up – baby to adult
- When I Grow Up – People Who Help Us
- Growing Plants
- Building
…and much more!
Our focus stories for this term are:
- Who Am I?
- Owl Babies
- Jack & the Beanstalk
- The 3 Little Pigs
The children will explore these stories in detail in order to learn and retell them. Other books we will be reading include:
- Easter is…For Me!
- Gruffalo’s Child
- When I Grow Up
- Errol’s Garden
- Non fiction books about plants and growth
- Non fiction books about building and materials
Please look at the Topic Briefing posted at the bottom of this page for more detailed information about what we will be covering in each Area of Learning.
Religion
In Religion we will explore the topic of Easter, with a focus on the Resurrection and the events that happened leading up to the Ascension of Jesus (when He returned to heaven). In the month of May we will spend some time learning about Mary, the Mother of Jesus. We will then move on to the topic of Pentecost, where we will find out about the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Holy Trinity. Our Religion lessons will be taught in a simple and sensitive way that the children will understand, including drama, creative activities, singing and stories.
Phonics
Phonics is taught daily in Reception and is vitally important as it provides the early building blocks used to teach children to read and write. At St Christopher’s we follow the Twinkl Phonics Scheme. This half term we will be continuing our focus on Level 3, including sounding out and correctly forming the Level 3 phonemes, learning tricky words, blending to read words, captions and sentences, and segmenting to write words, captions and simple sentences.
Reading
Children will bring home a phonics Mini Book each week to practise the phonemes they have learnt in phonics lessons, as well as reading books from our Rhino Readers reading scheme. Please support your children with reading at home – it has been proven that this is the most important thing you can do to help them progress at school. Please try to take a few minutes every day to hear them read their school books and record it in their Reading Diary. The ‘Reading codes’ in the front of the Diary will help you to do this more purposefully. Some children will be given words and/or phonemes to practise. Please make every effort to do this every day as it will improve their blending skills and phoneme recognition, and help them on the way to becoming more fluent readers. Thank you. Busy Book homework will also link directly to phonics lessons at school.
Writing
Our big focus this term is on writing sentences. By the end of the term, most children will be able to write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. This does not necessarily mean every word is spelt correctly, but they do need to apply their phonic skills to segment words and use the sounds they know to make a good attempt at spelling them. Please practise with your child to ensure they are forming each letter correctly, as this is important for when they progress to cursive (joined up) writing in KS1. They also need to begin to include capital letters, full stops and finger spaces and the tricky words we have been learning. Please continue to practise reading and writing the tricky word cards that we sent home last term a few times every week. If you need another copy of these, please ask us. For some children, we will also be extending sentences with words such as ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘because’, as well as using features such as question marks. Any extra help you can give at home makes a big difference to your child’s progress.
Maths
It is important now that your child can confidently recognise and order numbers to 10 (and progressing to 20 this term), is able to say 1 more/1 less than a number to 10 and can solve number problems such as adding and taking away. They also need to be able to recall the number bonds (pairs of numbers) that make each number to 10. This term we will also be focusing on number patterns such as odds/evens, doubling, halving and sharing objects into equal groups. We will be counting verbally up to 100 and beginning to look at patterns using a 100 square. Your child also needs to be able to recognise and describe the common 2D and 3D shapes.
PE
Our PE days this term are Wednesday and Thursday.
For this half term, YR children need to come to school every day in school uniform but bring a PE kit to school to change into for PE lessons, as part of their Physical Development Early Learning Goals. Please could you send in a simple PE drawstring bag containing PE shorts, T-shirt, socks and pumps/trainers without laces – all clearly labelled. This can be left at school for the half term. Please can you also check that names are still clearly evident in school uniform.
Please note: this is only for YR children, not the rest of the school.
. Please adhere to the school uniform guidelines for PE – no other T-shirts/sweatshirts are allowed. It is also important that no jewellery is worn and that hair below shoulder length is tied back.
Outdoors
Please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat if necessary as we will be using our outdoor area every day. As the weather becomes warmer, sun hats will also be required. Please apply sun cream before school if necessary. Don’t forget to send in a named water bottle every day.
Please make sure all clothes, including PE kit and especially jumpers/cardigans and coats are clearly labelled. Please help your child to learn how to put on and take off their own jumper/cardigan and coat independently. Thank you.
Weekly Topic Focus
At the start of each week, a Topic Focus will be posted at the bottom of our class page giving details of what we are learning at school and suggestions of things you can do at home. It will also contain any dates, information or reminders that you need to be aware of. In addition to this, don’t forget to check your child’s book bag every day for letters, pictures and information.
Dates for your diary
Tues 9th April: Tennis demonstration session (Albrighton Tennis Club)
Fri 12th April: YR attending Mass with Y5
Fri 19th April: Whole School Mass – St George’s Day
Mon 6th May: Bank Holiday
Thurs 9th May: Whole School Mass – Ascension Day
Fri 24th May: YR attending Mass with Y4
w/c 27th May: Half term holiday
We will update this webpage with news, dates and other information so please check it out regularly. If you have any questions feel free to email on:
We look forward to the next part of our learning journey together.
Mrs Poole & the YR team
xx
