Our Reception children have settled into their full days at school with smiley faces and motivated attitudes to learning. Lunch times are running smoothly for our children and we’re seeing an increasing number of empty plates! Now that our children are full time we would like to share our approach with you in more detail:
Our Environment: our classrooms have all been renovated over recent months and we are sure you will agree our site is looking fantastic! Our renovation of EYFS has supported our development in how we teach. Learning through play has a lot of misconceptions – particularly when previous models have been seen. Our team wholeheartedly believe and have seen the outstanding results of play based learning and would like to support our parents in understanding this proven approach. Please book on Mrs Parkin’s workshop ‘Play time is Brain time!’ for the proven science and strategies behind this approach and how you can support your child’s learning in the best possible way.
Effective Starting Points: getting to know every child and how they learn best is our priority over the first term. We ensure we set up enhancements in our environment that allow us to informally assess what your child can do and what their next step needs to be. This enables us to tailor our environment and learning opportunities so that they are constantly learning and moving forward.
Reading: during the first 6 weeks of your child’s schooling we ensure that we are pitching the challenge of books for reading accordingly. If your child is unable to currently read – please don’t panic – this is appropriate for their age. In phonics we are working on strategies to support their development of sounds and reading sight words so that they are equipped to tackle their own reading books when they take them home. Sending reading books home is ongoing as we cannot assess every child at the same time. All children will be receiving their first reading book by the beginning of October and then have their book changed weekly from then on. Throughout this year if you would like to take a challenge book home to share with your child please pop in to your child’s class and choose one from our challenge books area; these are books that are high quality texts that an adult will need to read aloud with their child.
Phonics: Please check the homepage for our current sounds that we are focusing on in phonics. If you are unsure how we pronounce these sounds please ask a member of our team. Phonics is an approach that many of us were not taught when we were at school therefore to support this please book on to Miss Armitt’s 3 part series of workshops called ‘Fantastic Phonics’ via the website.
PE: transition into PE lessons will be gradual over the forthcoming weeks. Our specialist PE teacher will be working in the EYFS setting weekly with our team to challenge our children in the environment through high quality physical development opportunities. This will then lead to them having formal PE lessons whereby they get changed and go into the school hall. Like all transitions – we need to respond to the children’s needs and we recognise that every cohort is different. We anticipate that all formal PE sessions will begin by the end of this first term but we will clarify the exact date when they have settled into school fully.
Changes to our approach are to ensure that we provide our children with the best learning opportunities. We want to establish an effective working relationship with our parents and support you in what ‘best practice’ in teaching and learning looks like. If there is an idea for a workshop that you have please do not hesitate to contact us.
