Newsletter and Updates

Reception Class Work and Photos

Welcome back! I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year and thank you for all your lovely presents.

Topic

This term our topic is Opposites. This topic incorporates a lot of mathematical and scientific discussions and investigations. We will be looking at the differences between things such as black and white, happy and sad, full and empty, tall and short, night and day.

Literacy

You may notice when you come into the classroom our ‘VCOP’ display. This stands for Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers and Punctuation. This term we will be encouraging the children to use a range of all these things in their speech and to begin to incorporate them into their writing. To do this we will be playing games that you could re-enforce at home. Things such as saying “Can you make up a sentence with the word because in it?”, “Can you make me up a sentence with the word We at the beginning?”. We will also be trying to use as many ‘wow words’ as possible, which are ‘grown up’ words(!), to help extend the children’s vocabulary.

Numeracy

We will be looking at adding and subtracting this term. This will mostly be done through practical activities, e.g. counting how many objects there are in 2 separate groups, then counting how many there are ‘altogether’.

Targets

Now the children are settled into school we will be giving them Literacy and Numeracy targets to help them to move onto the next steps in their learning. The way we explain this to the children is that their target is the thing they are trying really hard to do whenever we do writing or number work. Next week I will be putting your child targets in their home/school book for you to see. Your child will also have a ‘target card’ (to be kept at school) to remind them what their target is. I will include a copy of this in the home/school book next week so you can see the types of targets your child may have.

PE

Reception’s PE days will now be on Wednesday afternoons and Friday mornings.

Reminders

Just a few things I wanted to remind you about after the holiday:

• We recommend that you provide a bottle of water for your child to keep in the classroom for during the day (separate to lunchtime drink please).

   

• Could you check that all uniform and PE kits are labeled.

   

• Please provide spare underwear/clothes in case of accidents.

   

• Reading books will continue to be changed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and sounds/words from your child’s tin are tested on Wednesdays.

   

• Show and tell will continue on Fridays.

   

• Open mornings will start again next Wednesday.

   

• Our star board (for achievements at home) is remaining in the classroom this term, so I have attached another star for you to fill in if you wish (we have plenty in the classroom if you ever need more).

   

• We are in need of junk modelling materials again!

   

Finally, we have set up the role play area in the classroom as a Hairdressers for the first part of this term. We would like to use hair gel and crimpers/straighteners (the adults will be doing this, not the children!) to style the children’s hair with. Please could you let me know if you would rather we did not use these things to style your child’s hair at school.

Many thanks,

Miss K Malone