Reception - Robins

Welcome to Reception - Robins!

Welcome to Robins class! We are very excited to learn and play with you this year. 

Meet our team

Miss O'Shea is the Robins class teacher, on a Wednesday Mrs Rankin teaches the Robins class for half a day so that Miss O'Shea can prepare resources and plan lessons. Mrs West, Miss Moore and Miss Croucher are teaching assistants who all help in the Robins class.

Parent messages

Use the websites below to help your child with their home learning.

For lots of great ideas, games and practical activities in all areas of learning (including e-books)

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/ 

For phonics games (they have a free login which will be valid for a short period of time)

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

For phonics games

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/ (phase 2 and 3 games)

For practical maths activities

https://nrich.maths.org/13371

For some great practical Literacy activities

https://www.firstdiscoverers.co.uk/early-years-literacy-games-activities/

For activities and different topic games

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?AgeGroup=1

and

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Early-Years.html

For practising sciences skills and engaging children in conversations

https://explorify.wellcome.ac.uk/ (free to sign up)

For filtering results on any of these websites children in Reception are working at ‘EYFS’ stage or ‘Early Years’

What are we learning about?

This half term, our topic is 'Amazing animals'. We will be learning about different animals and their habitats including pets, UK animals, animals round the world, famr animals and baby animals.

In phonics lessons, we will be continuing to follow the 'Letters and Sounds' scheme of work. We will be continuing to learn new  and revise Phase 3 phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (written letters). We will also be extending the children to begin writing simple words and captions independently. For more information about phases 2 and 3 phonics, please visit the link at the bottom of this section.

In maths lessons, we will be exploring numerals to 20 and placing them in order as well as developing our understanding of addition and subtraction. 

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2.html

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3.html

A day in Reception

Please encourage your child to become independent with taking their shoes, coats and jumpers on and off and placing these in a safe place.

To begin our day, the children will come into the classroom and find their name card and place it inside a post-box to show they have arrived at school for the day. They will then need to find another name card which will be placed next to a busy-finger activity. These activities are designed to help develop fine motor strength which is important for good pencil grip and control. Next the children take part in a whole class phonics session followed by a child initiated learning time. The children then have another whole class literacy session which will focus on a different story each week. During the lunch hour, the children will be supported by mid-day supervisors and encouraged to make healthy choices. After lunch, the children come back to the classroom for a whole class maths session followed by another child initiated learning time. At the end of each day, we share a story or talk about our topic before getting ready for home.

Tapestry

Your child will have an online learning journal through the Tapestry app. For guidance on how to use the app, please speak to Miss O'Shea, who can support you with: signing up, viewing observations and uploading observations from home. We would love for parents to contribute to the journals by uploading learning achievements from home! This could be from a club, new experiences or a skill that has been mastered at home!   

Handwriting 

At Hillshott Infant and Nursery school we follow the PenPals handwriting scheme. Our younger children are introduced to four main characters which help them to memorise the sequence for writing each letter correctly. The key thing to remember is that all letters start from the top
(apart from d and e).

Pattern practice and ‘play’ writing are an important part of handwriting development. Your child will be practicing letter formation in a number of exciting ways: in sand, using paint, in the air, on the interactive television screens and iPads, as well as on paper with a pencil!