This year your teacher is Miss Holland and your teaching assistants are Mrs Crompton and Mrs Fowles.

PE will take place every Thursday.

For PE sessions please bring the following:

- Black shorts, leggings or jogging bottoms

- White t-shirt or polo shirt

- Black pumps or trainers

It is usually best to leave your child's PE kit in school for the half-term so that it is always available to use.

It is important that your child brings their reading book into school each day as the days on which they will be able to read with an adult may change from time to time. It is also crucial that you listen to your child read each evening and ensure that you sign their reading record highlighting what they have read and how they performed.

Within this class, reading records will be checked and books changed on a Wednesday.

Your children will also have two guided reading sessions a week and all focussed children will be sent home with a story bag for you all to enjoy. Please ensure that these get returned to school at the end of the week. 

Homework will be set on a Tuesday through our online learning platform, SeeSaw. A link for which is placed below:

https://app.seesaw.me/#/login

All homework should be completed by the following Monday and will be checked by your teacher on this day. Please make sure that if you are having difficulties with the homework, that you contact your class teacher with plenty of time so that they can assist your child in its completion. In addition, the school also run a homework club which can really help support those children that struggle completing their tasks independently.

Our autumn topic is: What do I know about me?

Welcome to reception! This half term we will be exploring our new classroom, learning our new routines and making friends! Following our baseline assessments, we will explore the question 'What do I know about me?' by thinking about...

What do I like/dislike?

Where do I live and what type of house do I live in?

Who are my friends? How am I the same/different to my friends?

Who is in my family & how am I part of my family? Are all of our families the same? (Science/History)

Where in the world do my family come from? (Geography)

Our key text is Peace at last by Jill Murphy

Our Personal, Social and Emotional focus for this half term will be...

• Express his/her feelings and considers the feelings of others.
• Sees himself/herself as a valuable individual.
• Shows resilience and perseverance in the face of challenge.
• Manages his/her own needs around personal hygiene.
• Builds constructive and respectful relationships
• Thinks about the perspectives of others.

Our Communication and Language focus for this half term will be...

• Engage in story times.
• Understand how to listen carefully and why listening is important.
• Learn new vocabulary.
• Develop social phrases.
• Engage in non-fiction books.
• Listen carefully to rhymes paying attention to how they sound.

Our Physical Development focus for this half term will be... 

• Is revising and refining the fundamental movement skills he/she has already acquired; rolling, crawling, walking, jumping, running, hopping, skipping, climbing.
• Is further developing the skills he/she needs to manage the school day successfully; lining up and queuing.
• Is developing his/her small motor skills so that he/she can use a range of tools competently, safely and confidently, e.g. pencils for drawing and writing, paintbrushes, scissors, knives, forks and spoons.

Our Literacy focus for this half term will be...

• Read individual letters by saying the sounds for them
• Blend sounds into words, so that they can read short words made up of known letter-sound correspondence.
• Use some of their print and letter knowledge in their early writing e.g. writing a pretend shopping list that starts at the top of the page, write ‘m’ for mummy
• Write some or all of their name
• Write some letters accurately

Our Maths focus for this half term will be...

• To match objects, explore and create sorting rules.
• To compare amounts. 
• To explore and compare size, mass, capacity.
• To explore, copy and continue repeating patterns. 

Our Understanding the world focus for this half term will be...

• Begin to understand, follow, use and talk about the daily routine using a visual timetable …morning, afternoon, next, in between.
• Recite the days of the week.
• Begin to use some sequencing vocabulary… first, last, day, night.
• Begin to make sense of their own life-story and family’s history.
• Know and talk about their immediate family.
• Know their family names/surnames.
• Develop an awareness of who is in their extended family - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
• Talk about what they were like when they were a baby.
• Talk about own family & develop an awareness of different types of families

Our Expressive, Arts and Design focus for this half term will be... 

• Explores, uses and refines and a variety of artistic effects to express his/her ideas and feelings.
• Listens attentively, moves to and talks about music, expressing his/her feelings and responses.
• Sings in a group or on his/her own, increasingly matching the pitch and following the melody.
• Is able to develop storylines in his/her pretend play.