Welcome to Reception
Reception Team:
- Class 1 Teachers – Mrs Campbell
- Class 2 Teacher – Mrs Betts and Miss Tayabji
- Class 3 Teacher – Mrs Miller (Year group leader)
- Mrs Eady (Higher Lever Teaching Assistant)
- Mrs Bance - Teaching Assistant
- Mrs Harris -Teaching Assistant
- Mrs Scotney - Teaching Assistant
The reception year has three classes with a maximum of 90 children in the year group. They have a lovely, stimulating environment which includes two outdoor play spaces one of which is undercover for those cold wet days! Outdoor learning is an important part of the Reception curriculum as it helps children to develop gross motor skills. The children are taught through a planned play based curriculum with times of whole class and small group teacher led lessons.
Over the school year the children cover a range of topics. In the Autumn term the topics are called “All about me” and “Celebrations”. In the spring term the topics are “Ice worlds” and “Growing”. In the summer term the topics are “Fairytales” and “Seaside.”
Parental comments following parents evening in October 2018;
"We are very pleased with how our daughter has settled into school and the support and challenge she is receiving. We appreciate the efforts the teachers have gone to with regards to her reading and we look forward to hearing about her adventures during the rest of the year."
"Thank you, you are all doing an amazing job my son loves coming to school!"
"My daughter always comes home from school with a smile."
"It was so lovely to see and hear how my son is doing in school. I especially loved seeing the literacy and learning journey books as I had no idea you did things like that and it was so lovely to see! He really does love school and his class and his teachers so much and we are very happy he has such a brilliant and caring school."
"We are really pleased with the way our daughter has settled in. She is really happy. She has made excellent progress so far, thank you."
Summer term in Reception!!!
Wow! What a busy Summer we have had in Reception! Our first topic was about growing. We retold the story of the hungry caterpillar, and watched our real caterpillars grow and pupate. When we had watched the whole life cycle, we released beautiful painted lady butterflies into the Reception garden. We used fruit from the story to practise our addition, finding different totals and beginning to record out addition in different ways.
We read ‘Oliver’s Vegetables’ and the ‘The Small, Small Seed’. The children explored different seeds and plants and then we grew some of our own. They thought about what the plants would need to grow and it was exciting to see how quickly our cress and beans sprouted. The children practised writing instructions for planting seeds. It was fun to look at their baby photos and talk about how they have grown and changed too!
In Mental Health Awareness Week, the children thought about how to keep our minds healthy as well as our bodies. They loved making up their own games and sharing them with others.
There have been lots of opportunities for problem-solving, especially in maths, where we have been encouraging the children to record their maths in pictures and numbers and to explain their understanding.
We read and story-mapped ‘Paddington at the Zoo’ in preparation for our trip to the Safari Park and celebrated our week of Paddington with a picnic of Marmalade sandwiches!
Our Trip to Woburn was great fun and we spotted lots of our favourite animals. When we got back to School, the children wrote their own descriptions of the animals they had seen – there was some fabulous independent writing!
The children practised hard for Sports Day and we were lucky with the weather.
There has been a busy buzz in all the classes and the children have been becoming more independent in their learning.
The children have had fun visiting their new classes for storytime sessions and transfer days in preparation for Year 1. There has also been lots of opportunity to celebrate their progress and success this year with special assemblies and presentations.