Reception Class

Spring Term 2026 Reception

Welcome back Class 1 and Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday. We are looking forward to another exciting term ahead.

This term our topic is ‘Winter, Polar Regions and Transport’ where we will be finding out all about Polar regions, what animals live there and how we may travel there. Children will also think about how it is similar and different to where they live. We will also learn about the Lunar New Year and how it is celebrated. Later in the term, we will be finding out all about ‘Space’. We will learn about the planets, explore who Neil Armstrong is and how people first travelled to space.

As your child’s class teachers and key workers, we are keen to receive any feedback you may have which will support your child as they continue their learning journey in Class 1. If at any time you want to let us know anything extra, or if you have any questions or concerns, do please ask us at school drop off or pick up or arrange a meeting (telephone or face-to-face).  Alternatively, you can message us on Class Dojo or contact the admin team in the office who can forward emails to us or arrange meetings.  Similarly, you can pop a message in your child’s Reading Record.  It is so important that we keep communicating about the needs of your little ones so we can work together to support them.

English/Literacy

In our daily phonics lessons, we will be continuing practicing our set 1 sounds and the corresponding letters, using the Read Write Inc. systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme. We will be introducing ditty sheets where the children will also begin to read and write short sentences using their phonics knowledge. Later in the term the children will begin reading phonics books and learning set 2 special friends.

To help your child keep up with the RWI programme, we will record what the children have focused on in their phonics lessons each day in their reading record and a ditty sheet/red book will be added for them to practise at home.  We will also upload Reading support videos as appropriate (see more on Dojo for this).  Additional to the formal Phonics programme, we provide many opportunities to develop early Literacy skills through games and the indoor and outdoor enhanced provision. The children will build up to Reading decodable texts, focusing on decoding (sounding out and blending), prosody (reading with expression and intonation) and comprehension skills.

 

Mathematics

The focus of this term will be for children to continue to develop their subitising and counting skills and explore composition of numbers within and beyond 5. They will also begin to identify when two sets are equal or unequal and connect two equal groups to doubles. They will also start to make the connection between amounts and their matching numerals. We will use a combination of National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathemathics (NCETM), Numberblock materials, as well as Whiterose materials.  Alongside this, we will be exploring one more than and one less than numbers up to 10, investigating length, height and time and comparing numbers up to 10. Alongside daily whole-class teaching sessions, there will be a range of child-led opportunities to develop mathematical skills through meaningful play during indoor and outdoor continuous provision.

Themes (Understanding the World/Expressive Arts and Design)

During our topic work linked with ‘Winter, Polar Regions and Transport’ and ‘Space’ the children will have opportunities to enjoy a wide varied of inspiring experiences including creating artworks using material and man-made materials, investigating how people travel, exploring what happens to ice, completing bubbling Planet science experiments and creating alien biscuits to name a few.

PE/Physical Development

In addition to engaging in a range of activities linked to improving physical development through indoor and outdoor continuous provision.  There will also be a weekly PE session on a Tuesday with Mr Hayler who will be focusing on developing functional skills.  The children are welcome to leave their PE kits in school and we will send them home if we feel they need washing or at the end of each half term.

PSHE/Personal, Social and Emotional Development

This is such a crucial part of your child’s education and underpins everything that we do.  Through all our activities, every child will have the opportunity to develop their personal, social and emotional skills; learning how to get on with each other and to have mutual respect and responsibility.  We will introduce and explore our school values: building Relationships by being Resilient, Resourceful, Reflective and Respectful as well as our school motto; ‘Aim High, Be Resilient & Take Care of Each Other’.  Often, we will have a focus on specific elements of PSED in activities such as circle time and with a programme called SCARF (Coram) using specialised resources and stories.  The SCARF theme this term is ‘Keeping Safe’ and ‘Rights and Respect’.

Home learning

In Reception we ask you to support your child’s learning by helping them ditty sheets/ RWI books 5 times a week. In the first part of the term please continue to use ‘Fred talk’ and blending to support children to read their sound blending books and ditty sheets. As the term continued the children will have decodable phonics books that will need to practised daily.  Please record their daily reads in their phonics book alongside any other reading you complete together at home.

It is also beneficial to help your child practise correct letter and number formation and to practise counting and recognising numbers 0-10.  We will continue using ‘Numberbots’ to support Maths in the Classroom and at home and please also continue using the 1-minute maths app to support subitising fluency.

We always love to see the children’s home learning.  Each week via Class Dojo we will share what have been doing in Class.  We will also use Class Dojo to share additional class messages.  Please see below for more information about the EYFS curriculum.

Please do look at the weekly newsletter where there are school updates and useful dates.

Again, if you have any worries or questions, please do not hesitate in contacting us.

Many thanks for your support with your child’s learning,

Mrs Matthews (Class teacher), Mrs Cawsey (Class teacher) Mrs Elkins (Teaching Assistant)

 

 

 

Characteristics of Effective Learning A Parents Guide Summer

Characteristics of Effective Learning A Parents Guide Spring

Please click on the link for more information about the Early learning goals: Early Learning Goals – website