Teaching assistants: Mrs Milner, Miss Williamson, Miss Noble and Miss Christian.
Starting Reception in September? Here is a link to some good information:
Starting primary school – BBC Parents’ Toolkit – BBC Bitesize
The Penguin class are Reception children aged 4 and 5. We learn through a mixture of adult led and independent learning and have free flow indoor and outdoor provision throughout the day. Our staff play alongside the children during continuous provision to extend their learning opportunities through careful support, questioning and high quality interactions. The children are immersed in a language-rich environment and this helps to develop their communication and language skills. We follow the interests of the children and enhance and adapt the provision to reflect this. We also thread in topics such as Bonfire night, Easter, Pancake Day etc “Fixed Feasts” throughout the year. These are learning opportunities that we feel are an important part of a child’s learning and understanding of the world around them.
Our classroom and provision is ever evolving to ensure that it always meets the children’s learning needs. We are independent learners and are able to access resources and equipment independently during continuous provision.
Our teachers ensure that the curriculum and learning opportunities are fun, practical, matched to individual learning needs and led by our interests.
We enjoy baking every week, making lots of new foods for us to try.
We teach children how to read using the Little Wandle, Letters and Sounds scheme of work, supporting children to later become independent and fluent readers.
We invite parents to attend a reading meeting early in September to discuss how we teach reading and ways they can help and support their child at home.
Phonics is taught daily, ensuring that previous learning is revisited, new learning (sounds and words) are introduced, and any new learning is consolidated through fun games and activities during continuous provision.
A love for reading is encouraged and fostered in the Penguin class. We enjoy reading in many various forms and always look forward to our story at the end of the day.
We enjoy a wide range of texts, stories, poems and rhymes. However, we have a set of core texts that we use in Reception (see our core reading list). These build on the core texts covered in Nursery.
Reading books are matched to the children’s ability and changed at least once a week although can be changed more regularly if required.
We love being outside in the Penguins and do much of our learning outdoors whatever the weather. We are lucky enough to have a large and varied outside area including a woodland/wildlife area, mud kitchen and fire pit, bike and scooter area, water and climbing wall as well as various climbing equipment and a slide. We also plant and grow our own fruits and vegetables. We enjoy picking them when they are ready, using them to cook with and eating them for snack!
Some of our learning opportunities include:
Making bird food and feeders, splashing and jumping in muddy puddles, making mud slides, cooking and baking in the mud kitchen, exploring and hiding, den making, digging for worms, climbing trees, bug hunts, making bug hotels and making patterns and pictures with the natural resources we find.
We love nothing more than warming ourselves up with some toast and hot chocolate afterwards. Yummy!
Opportunities for physical development are provided in many different ways throughout our day. We like moving and exercising with Danny Go and following his moves to music. We have PE in the hall each week. Sometimes using the large apparatus or practising our fundamental skills to help us with our balance, control and coordination. We have access to outdoor provision and apparatus daily to help develop our gross motor skills. We do funky fingers every day (alongside a song) to help develop our fine motor skills and have opportunities for developing these skills daily in continuous provision. This will help us to use tools and pencils with greater control and accuracy and help prepare us for writing.
We use the White Rose Maths scheme of
learning alongside Big Maths CLIC which we assess weekly. There is discrete
teaching of new learning which is then consolidated through a mixture of adult-led
activities and continuous provision. We also enjoy learning our Maths through
the use of stories, interactive whiteboard resources and lots outdoors too.
We take a very practical approach to Maths and we make the learning experiences fun and meaningful to the children with real life problems to solve!
