Welcome to Reception!
June 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:
‘How will we get there?’
We will be thinking about different journeys and ways to travel, both real and imaginary. Our learning will include:
- Looking at different types of maps and making our own simple maps
- Describing what we might see on an exciting train journey
- Finding out which method of transport is our favourite in Reception
- Using shapes to make, paint and draw vehicles
- Investigating capacity, position and direction
- Making our own vehicles using junk modelling and construction kits
- Creating musical journeys using our voices and instruments
- Finding out about vehicles in the past
- Writing a letter from the seaside
- Imagining where we would go if we could fly an aeroplane…
…and much more!
Our focus stories for this term are:
- Jenny’s Adventure
- Naughty Bus
- All Aboard the Dinosaur Express
- Noah’s Ark
The children will explore these stories in detail in order to learn and retell them. Other books we will be reading include:
- Up, Up, Up!
- Mr Gumpy’s Motor Car
- The Journey Home from Grandpa’s
- The Hundred Decker Bus
- You Can’t Take an Elephant on the Bus
- Magic Train Ride
- The Mouse Who Sailed the Seas
- Polly Parrot Picks a Pirate
- Non-fiction books about transport, including vehicles in the past
Religion
In Religion we will focus on prayer, including learning ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’, and will also be exploring various Bible stories such as Noah’s Ark and David and Goliath. 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 moving on to Level 4, which focuses on reading and writing words containing adjacent consonants. We will be learning new Level 4 tricky words, as well as continuing to practise Level 3 phonemes and tricky words. This will include 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. Children do not need to bring a PE kit to school but come to school dressed in their PE clothes: blue shorts or plain dark blue jogging trousers (depending on the weather), a white T-shirt, school jumper/cardigan, trainers (without laces please). 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
Wed 12th June: Whole school Sports Day at Aldersley Stadium (9am – 12 noon)
Fri 28th June: YR/Y1 trip to Sycamore Adventure
Sat 29th June: Summer Fair – 12 noon – 3pm.
Fri 5th July: INSET Day
Fri 12th July: Whole School Leavers’ Mass
Fri 19th July: Last day of term
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
