‘Let all that you do be done in love.’

1 Corinthians 16:14

Welcome to Reception Class!

Our class teacher is Miss Harrison and our teaching assistant is Mrs Chandler.

There's lots of information below on life in Reception.

We all hope that your child has a happy and successful start to school life in our Reception class, and that you enjoy sharing their learning with us.

In Reception class, we learn through a balance of child initiated and adult led activities but both are lead through play and active learning. Play allows children to learn new skills as well as consolidate and build on existing knowledge and skills. We call play ‘choosing our learning’.  This is when children explore the indoor and outdoor classroom and engage in purposeful provision aimed at allowing children to practice and apply previous learning whilst being scaffolded by an adult who interacts and co plays alongside them.  Here children develop skills of a lifelong learner such as problem solving, social interactions, resilience and independence to name but a few! Children always have access to outdoor learning so please ensure they have a pair of wellingtons at school at all times and you may wish to provide waterproofs. We do have spare waterproofs for children who need them.

Please see the Reception timetable for more specific information about the school day.

We invite parents into school at the start of every school day to support their child with independence in hanging up their coats and organising their reading book/snack and self-registering by selecting their choice of lunch. Then parents can help their child complete ‘morning activity’ for 5 minutes before registration. Morning activities include name writing, number recognition and counting and reading tasks. This time also allows for parents to share any information they feel relevant about their child for the school day ahead or seek ideas on how to support with home school learning with myself or Mrs Hornbuckle.

Reading

We place a great emphasis on reading at St Laurence’s Primary School and our main aim is to instil a love of reading in children. In Reception we read stories daily and we ask that you do at home too. We send picture books weekly for you to read to your child and we also have a Book Swap box in Reception that can be used as frequently as you wish. Simply bring in a book that you have read and exchange it for another book in the box and enjoy! We have 20 favourite books which we listen and learn throughout the year and we bring stories alive through drama and role play. When children have the necessary skills to blend sounds together and read words we will begin to send home phonic reading books. These books often lack new vocabulary and imaginative story lines as they are aimed at developing early reading.  So in order to maintain children’s love of books we ask that you continue to emerge your child in exciting stories, read or told by yourself each night too.

Once children are given phonic reading books it is very important that they read every night. Reading record books should be signed by parents each evening and along with the reading book and book bag, should be brought into school every day. We aim to change reading books on Friday but will change books more frequently for those who wish. Please try to hear your child read daily, even if it's only for 5 minutes so they can build on their segmenting and blending skills. Teach Your Monster To Read can be accessed for free on a computer but will only work on an iPad if you download the app. This is a fun way to help support your child learning to read.

Phonics

At the start of Reception we focus on Letters and Sounds Phase 1. We work on developing children's speaking and listening skills which lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. We aim for all children to be confident at blending (saying sounds then joining together to make the word) and segmenting (breaking a word up into individual sounds) orally before we introduce letters and sounds.

We teach children the sound and its written representation in the order of Letters and Sounds with many practical games and activities but make it more memorable by using the Read Write Inc rhymes. This also helps to support letter formation when children start to write letters. We also write in pre-cursive writing so every letter starts on the line and swoops up. This helps children to progress to joined up writing later in the school.

When learning sounds, we will send home stickers that detail the sounds for that week along with some words to read and some Tricky words to learn by sight.

We hold a phonic workshop in Autumn term to help with the teaching and learning of phonics.

Homework

We ask that you read to your child daily for 10 minutes and once children receive phonics reading books that they read daily too. Please ensure you are working on the phonics stickers each week too.

 In summer term we will send homework which may be one piece of literacy/ maths per week. This will go home on the Friday evening and must be returned by the following Wednesday.

Rewards

We have a sunshine reward system. Children start each day on the rainbow. They move themselves to the sunshine for positive behaviour and receive a sunshine sticker at the end of each day. 10 sunshine stickers allows for a dip in the prize box. For negative behaviours children will be warned verbally but persisting behaviour will lead to them going onto the rain cloud or thunderstorm (but this is a rarity). If this happens children will be supported to redeem themselves as we guide children to follow the rules with more of focus on the positives.

Children can also be nominated for the Friday worship stickers by any member of staff or welfare assistants.  For outstanding effort or success children may be awarded the Superstar award and a ‘Writer of the week’ certificate too!

PE/Uniform

• PE kit in a suitable bag: White T-Shirt, Blue or Black Shorts and Plimsolls. PE will be on Thursday morning. This may alter when PE is led by Chorley School Sports Partnership. No jewellery should be worn during PE. If children have pierced ears , earrings will need to be removed at home in order to participate in the PE lessons. Long hair should also be tied back for safety reasons. Please ensure that PE kits are in school and all items are named. If PE kits are not in school, unfortunately children will not be able to participate. Children are required to wear pumps/trainers for PE.
• Winter uniform: White or Light Blue Shirt or Blouse and Tie*, Long or Short Grey Trousers / Grey Skirt or Pinafore, Royal Blue Pullover or Cardigan
• Summer uniform: White or Grey Socks, Shoes or Sandals. Royal Blue/White Gingham Dress, Royal Blue or White Polo Shirt  *The ties are blue with a stripe (elasticated) for Early Years. (Both are obtainable from school.)

Useful Links

The Reception Class Blog!

January 2020

After hearing of a little boy who wrote letters to a dinosaur in the story ‘Dear Dinosaur’ the children wanted to write letters to one of the dinosaurs in our class museum. When we returned after lunch tables and chairs were upside down and we found some replies .....