Reception Class

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Welcome to our Reception page.

Reception at Swanland Primary school is a fun, multi-sensory, hands-on learning environment which supports each child in making their next step of learning.

We engage in all areas of our Early Years Curriculum in our outdoor and indoor classrooms.  We plan and asses using the 7 areas of Learning and the Characteristics of Effective learning identified in the Early Years Curriculum.

It is our aims:

  • To provide a curriculum appropriate to the developmental needs of all the children.
  • To provide an environment where all the children are safe, happy and secure.
  • To establish strong links with parents from the earliest opportunity.
  • To make the transition from Nursery to Reception and Reception to Year One as smooth and informed as possible.
  • To encourage all children to develop independence, persistence and the capacity to become successful learners.
  • To encourage children to develop their social and emotional skills to become caring, thoughtful and considerate members of our school family.

We offer each child a home visit prior to them starting school so that the class teachers can meet the child and their parents in their own home.  The children will also be invited to 3 short classroom visits to meet the Reception staff and to become familiar with other children that will be in their class and the layout of their classroom.  Staff will liaise with each child’s preschool setting and key workers during the summer term before they start school.

We use Tapestry which is an online Learning journal that sends home regular photographs and assessments to parents of their child’s activities and learning. Parents are invited weekly to share classroom practice.

We hope that you enjoy looking at the photographs which present snapshots of our learning and adventures.

Many thanks

The Reception Team

 

 

For a link to our Long Term Plan, to find out what areas and topics we are covering this year, please click this link.

 

Autumn Term 1 Reception Knowledge Map Autumn 1

 

Autumn Term 2 Reception Knowledge Map Autumn 2

 

Spring Term 1 Reception- Knowledge Map Spring 1

 

Spring Term 2 Reception Knowledge Map Spring 2

 

Summer Term 1 Reception Reception - Knowlege Map Summer 1 (1)

 

Summer Term 2 Reception   Knowledge Map Summer 2 complete

 

 

Our Outdoor Classroom is a wonderful learning environment for our Reception children. It provides vital opportunities to investigate, be creative, develop social skills and scaffold our learning.

After being inspired by Jamie Oliver and celebrating vegetables we have a vegetable planting area in our outdoor classroom. The children will grow vegetables, cook with the vegetables we grow and develop their nutritional understanding of food and healthy eating.

It is our mission to engage children’s senses, spark imagination and invite children to explore and discover.  We aim to evoke wonder, curiosity and adventure.  We do this by providing memorable hands-on experiences that progress skills and knowledge and develop spoken language skills

Construction - continuous provision autumn

Creative - continuous provision autumn

Home corner - continuous provision autumn

Malleable - continuous provision autumn

Mark making - continuous provision autumn

Maths - continuous provision autumn

Mud kitchen - continuous provision autumn

Reading - continuous provision autumn

Encouraging your child’s familiarity with books will put them at a great advantage when they start school. Let them turn the pages and pretend to read. Follow the words with your finger, and get them to engage with the story by asking them to guess what happens next and describe the pictures.
Make the story come alive by use funny voices, toys and actions.
Encourage your child to read to you. Follow the words with your finger and sound out the words (c-a-t: cat).
Praise your child for trying hard at their reading. Reassure them that it’s okay to make mistakes.
Point out all the words around you: labels on food, on street signs, on advertising billboards. Model the words and get your child to repeat.

Activity idea: Find your family’s top five reads. Ask everyone in your family to name their favourite reads – it could be a book, magazine, comic or newspaper. Involve grandparents, cousins, friends, and neighbours.

Small Talk is a website from the National Literacy Trust.  it helps parents turn the everyday activities they’re already doing with their child into new opportunities to fill their child’s world with words.

In Reception children will be working with numbers every day, in a range of different ways. They will be using familiar objects to help them learn about how numbers are used in everyday life, and they will also be linking numbers to topic work; for example, if they are learning about dinosaurs they could be making dinosaur pictures out of shapes. They will be encouraged to be curious and explore numbers. They will be playing number games, singing counting songs, making models and using the role-play area, as well as being introduced to the ideas of addition and subtraction. At home, try to talk about numbers – it’s important for children to see just how much maths is used in everyday life.

Reception maths – your child will be:

Using numbers as labels and for counting

Counting up to 20 and beyond.
Recognising the numbers 1 to 20
Estimating a number of objects and checking by counting
Matching and comparing the number of objects in two groups
Counting out a number of objects from a larger group

CalculatingUsing a number line to count on and back
Finding one more or one less than a number.
Sharing objects into equal groups and counting how many are in each group
Understanding that ‘addition’ means combining and ‘subtraction’ means taking away
Finding the total number of items in two groups by counting them all
Comparing numbers and recognising which is ‘more’ or ‘less’

Shape, space and measures

Comparing quantities and using words such as ‘greater’, ‘smaller’, ‘heavier’ or ‘lighter’
Recognising and creating their own simple patterns
Naming and describing the shape and size of solid (3D) and flat (2D) shapes
Using everyday words to describe the position of objects
Sorting familiar objects and describing their differences and similarities
Making patterns and building models
Putting two or three items in order, according to their length or weight
Matching shapes and patterns
Building on a basic understanding of time: putting familiar events in sequence; measuring time, using a sand-timer

You could try these ideas at home

Practise counting – you can do this anywhere: count toys, books, how many buses you see when you go out
Play hide and seek – again, good practice for counting
Save your cereal boxes and cardboard tubes for making models. Your child will think they’re making a castle; you’ll know they’re learning about shapes!
Do a jigsaw together – a fun way to develop spatial awareness and matching skills
Play card games – even a simple game of snap helps to develop number recognition
Have a teddy bears’ picnic: count out toys, place settings, and share out the cakes
Put up a height chart and mark each member of the family’s height
At bathtime, play with different-sized containers

Science doesn’t have to mean complicated experiments with chemicals and Bunsen burners. Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage can get involved in science with these fun, fast-results experiments. You can easily bring science to life at home.

A great hub for home-science explorations, packed with videos and free guides to exploring chemistry and physics with children, is the Royal Institution’s ExpeRiment site.