Meet the teaching team

Class Teacher: Miss Hopkins

Higher Lever Teaching Assistant (HLTA): Miss Swarbrick

Teaching Assistant: Miss Holland

Curriculum Overview

Within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) there are seven areas of learning and development. All areas are important and inter-connected.

Prime areas are fundamental, work together, and move through to support development in all other areas.

· Personal, Social and Emotional Development

· Communication and Language

· Physical Development

Specific areas include essential skills and knowledge for children to participate successfully in society.

· Literacy

· Mathematics

· Understanding the World

· Expressive Arts and Design

Our curriculum also focuses on the Characteristics of Effective Learning. The Unique Child reaches out to relate to people and things through the Characteristics of Effective Learning, which move through all areas of learning.

· playing and exploring

· active learning

· creating and thinking critically

At New Longton All Saints’ in Reception we follow ‘In the moment planning’, which means we listen to the interests of our children and plan and create topics and activities around what they want to learn about. Due to the topics being child led we do not have a set length of time that we give for each topic, instead we let the child guide us to when they are ready to move on and develop further. Through Tapestry you will received regular updates of what your child has been up to in the school day and what area of the curriculum they have covered.

Phonics

Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another. Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read. Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words.

Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch. Teaching children to blend the sounds of letters together helps them decode unfamiliar or unknown words by sounding them out. For example, when a child is taught the sounds for the letters t, p, a and s, they can start to build up the words: “tap”, “taps”, “pat”, “pats” and “sat”.

The correct terminology is;

Phoneme – The smallest unit of sound. Phonemes can be put together to make words.

Grapheme – A way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. sh, 3 letters e.g. tch or 4 letters e.g ough.

P.E Day

Receptions P.E. day is on a Monday. Children should come dressed in their P.E. kit. Please look at the weather forecast when deciding whether your child should wear their indoor or outdoor kit.

Forest Tuesday

Every Tuesday afternoon the children will get on their waterproofs and wellies and explore our forest school/outdoor area taking part in a range of activities. Please ensure your child’s waterproofs remain in school as we do use our outdoor classroom what ever the weather!

Reading

Reading books will go home after the children have settled into school. Please try and read with your child each night. In Reception we encourage children to read the book multiple times to develop their reading fluency and understanding of the text. Once your child has read please comment in your child’s reading diary stating how they found the book, did they struggle with any words? Etc. Books should be brought in each day as all children will read twice a week to a member of staff. Reading books will be changed on a Friday for all children, which will incorporate the new sounds we have learnt that week. Your child will also receive a sound book, please practise these daily.  Weekly videos of how to best support your child with their new sounds will be posted on the memos section of Tapestry as the children cover them.

Mathematics and Literacy Homework

Homework activities will be sent each half term with targets that you can practise with your child.  Evidence of these can be uploaded to your child’s tapestry account should you wish to do so.

Lunch menus

Lunch menus will be sent home at the end of the week for the following week. Please complete and hand them back in no later than Monday morning so that the kitchen staff have enough time to prepare your child’s preferred meal choice.

Tapestry

Please ensure you access Tapestry through your browser and not the app as it has come to our attention that when logging on through the app not all posts are visible. Observations of your child will be uploaded regularly. Please log on at least once a week so that you see what the class have been getting up to and to check for any memos which may have been posted.

Key Dates

13th September (4.45pm & 5.45pm) Meet the teacher

20th September (5pm-6pm) Phonics information evening

‘Marvellous Me’ Topic Overview

Our first topic in Reception is ‘Marvellous Me.’ We will be exploring how we are all special and important. Attached is our topic overview, which provides an insight into what we will be learning and exploring in this topic.

‘People Who Help Us’ Topic Overview

Our next topic is exploring the ‘People Who Help Us.’ We will be exploring what they do, what the profession does and how they help us. We will be inviting visitors to come into school to talk to us about their jobs.