Reception

Is everyone just like me?

This term our concept question is 'Is everyone just like me?' The first half of the term is all about settling in and getting to know each other. We use the first half term to learn about behaviour expectations, exploring the school and classroom environment and making friends. We will celebrate every child joining our Reception Class. We will discuss our similarities and differences, and learn about what makes us unique. Starting school can be a big change, therefore this topic helps us to learn all about your child and it also supports the children with feeling comfortable at school. We will help the children learn how to navigate new friendships and will support them with adapting to a new environment. We will help their confidence flourish so that they can communicate their wants and needs with ease and to help them understand that people have different thoughts and feelings. This will help the children to communicate with their peers and share resources when interacting with others. Every child is different, therefore during the first few weeks we will complete a baseline assessment to help us plan for your child's unique learning journey. 

Outdoor Learning

 We participate in regular 'Outdoor Learning' sessions in our Forest School area. There are numerous benefits of learning outside the classroom for a child’s development, both physically and mentally. Recently we have read the story of 'We're going on a bear hunt' and together we went on our own bear hunt. We walked through the long wavy grass, the thick oozy mud, the dark forest and worked as a team to build a bridge to cross the river. We are yet to walk through the snowstorm, we are sure this will arrive in the winter. We did find some fresh paw prints that we think were left by a bear! Upon our return to the classroom we also found Bertie Bear, our class bear. Bertie likes to notice all of the children following our school rules and at the end of the week he likes to spend the weekend with our class role model. 

How we learn

In the Reception class the children have short adult led maths and phonics sessions. They then spend time in Adventure time. This is where the children have opportunities to develop their own play and independent exploration within our continuous provision. The adults then scaffold their learning, helping the children to deepen their knowledge and enrich their vocabulary. Through this the children are able to develop the characteristics of effective learning so that they can play and explore, actively learn and create and think critically.

There are seven areas of learning in reception: 

Prime areas: Communication and Language, Personal, Social and Emotional development, Physical development

Specific areas:  Literacy,  Mathematics, Understanding the world and Expressive arts and design