Welcome to Class 1 - Jellyfish Class and a very warm welcome to Autumn term 1! 

Please do not hesitate to come and see me after school, or give me an email if you have any questions. My email address is b.myatt@consortiumtrust.org.uk 

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Important information: 

-Your child needs their own named plastic water bottle to keep in class, which they can access and top up during the day. Please bring wellies, labelled for wet weather and muddy ground. Please also ensure your child brings trainers every day to change into for the Golden Mile run round the field to help keep our carpets mud-free. They may also wish to bring a healthy snack (fruit or veg/crackers etc) for morning break which they can eat at the beginning of play time. They will also have the option to have a school-provided snack (fruit or veg) and milk in the afternoon. They will need to sign up for this. Ask Henley Office if you need help with doing this. Please label every part of your child's uniform so that if they misplace it, we will know it's theirs. They need a bookbag for their books if possible to keep them safely away from water and snacks.

- Feel free to join the Class 1 parents WhatsApp group if you want to- ask other parents to add you in. This can  help to find missing bits of uniform at the end of the day if the wrong children take them home! 

- I will send you a class newsletter every week with any reminders and information you need as well as updates on the children's learning that week. I will only send pictures of your child(ren) if they have got consent for this via Arbor.  

-Please encourage your child to bring in something or have a song ready to sing/a joke ready to tell/ a picture they have made every Monday for 'show and tell' with Mr Barlow. Thank you. 

Homework: 

-You will receive phonics flashcards in the Autumn term and these need to be practised everyday please. Once your child has learnt the sound, I will tick it at school. Please don't tick it at home. I will then replace with new sounds. Once your child has progressed and learnt all the red level sounds, they can take a red colour-coded library book home to read. They need to read this twice before changing it, this is to help with fluency and comprehension. The government guidance states that Early Years and Key Stage One children should read a book 10 minutes everyday at home to maintain a good level of progress. This can be done at bedtime or at any point in the morning or evening, a routine really does help to get into the rhythm of fitting this in. We ask that you sign their reading diary each time to say what book they read, the page number they are on and any comments. We will listen to them read during small group guided reading time as well as during lessons like Literacy and others as well as doing their flashcards daily at school.  

Our exciting learning this term... 

Our Early Learning Goals for the end of Reception year:

 

Morning activities: Reception will be practising our fine motor skills such as pencil grip, cutting, painting, writing skills through a number of activities like squeezing, rolling, poking using play dough, tweezers, weaving string, using sand to mark-make in preparation for writing.

  

Phonics:  

This term, Reception children are learning Phase 1 Phonics; how to listen carefully through fun games such as 'Teddy in the jungle' where one child hides a teddy in the classroom or outside and plays a drum noise for the rest of the class if anyone gets close to the teddy. We will wear our big listening ear headbands and go outside to see what sounds we can hear e.g. birds, cars, tractors, rain on the gutters. We will then move on to learning how each letter sounds and how it has a corresponding grapheme (how you see it written on paper). 

We will also be learning Phase 2 phonics using our scheme 'Little Wandle'.  

See the early learning goal for Reception and our rhymes that we use to teach the children each sound and the saying we use when we are forming each letter. 

Literacy:  

Reception children will be looking at the story 'Bug Hotel'. We will be talking about how this book is non-fiction and enjoying making our own bug hotels. 

We will also be enjoying reading lots of fiction books, enjoying story telling, practising actions and roleplay to go with them and eventually having a go at drawing our own story maps with pictures and symbols to represent parts of the story. We will then be looking at The Gruffalo, Sulwe, Baby Mouse, The Colour Monster, Pattan Pumpkin and Room on the Broom. 

We will also be learning rhymes and poems to expand our vocabulary and consolidate our communication and language skills. Towards the end of the year, the children will look at how to create simple sentences that include capital letters, full stops and interesting words like adjectives. 

Maths: 

Reception children will be looking at matching objects, learning nursery rhymes, ordering numbers to 10, making patterns like ABAB- teddy, frog, teddy, frog, learning how to sort objects by features like colour and shape, compare length and height by building towers, looking at height of children and whether objects are big or small, comparing groups of objects and talking about which group has more and which has less, looking at one ot one correspondence- does each child have a snack? Everyday we count how many children are in our class and write down the number on our maths display. We will have fun opportunities to do baking cupcakes and making playdough, using weighing scales and measuring liquids and talking about quantities of each ingredient.  

Science/Understanding the World (UTW): 

In EYFS we will be doing lots of outdoor learning, we will be learning about how to explore the natural world around us, describing what we can see, hear and feel whilst outside. We will aim to understand the effect of the changing seasons on the natural world around us. 

Topic: Our topic this term is 'Marvellous Me'. See the knowledge organiser below:​

Music (EAD): We will be learning lots of nursery rhymes, enjoying listening to different genres of music, begginning to identify the beat and discuss if we like the music.

 

We will also be doing lots of practice for the harvest festival this term. 

Art (EAD) : We will be learning how to do self-portraits and about artists who did self portraits like Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol and Picasso. We will be constructing self portraits using materials like play dough and progressing onto clay as well.

  

RE (UTW) : We will be looking at some different religions and beliefs including:  

Diwali​ 

We will look at other cultures through learning focusses like Chinese new Year, tasting Chinese foods. 

PSED: We will be looking at our mental health and wellbeing, continuing to use our emotions chart throughout the day to explain how we are feeling and why. We will be learning how to use strategies for when we are feeling sad, cross, angry and what we an do when we are feeling happy. We will be developing our skills on how to share and take turns when playing, go to the toilet and get dressed independently.