Teacher – Miss Beedle

TA-  Mrs Campbell, Miss Austen

Spring Term 2024:

Communication Language and Literacy

The children in reception have been enjoying our topic ‘Our World and Beyond’. We listened to stories such as ‘Hello Penguin’ and ‘How to Catch a Star’. We focussed on the author Oliver Jeffers and enjoyed lots of stories about Space and looking after planet Earth. We learnt more about non-fiction writing and created our own posters on penguins and how to look after the Earth. This term the children have also been learning the key features of having a two-way conversation, such as eye contact, turn-taking and making comments such as “that’s so interesting” and “please continue”. After the half-term, the children in Reception will be learning about the topic ‘plants and growing’. They will be reading Jack and the Jellybean Stalk by Rachel Mortimer, The Enormous Turnip and Oliver’s Fruit Salad. We will also be celebrating World Book Day by dressing up as our favourite book characters.

 

Maths

We are starting to learn about numbers to 8 and how to represent them using numicon, cubes and tens frames. We have continued to work hard in maths and have learnt lots of facts about numbers 6, 7 and 8! We have been learning about the composition of each number. The children have also really enjoyed practical work with capacity and weight. After the half-term, the Reception children will be learning about numbers to 10. They know lots of different number facts and will now be exploring the composition of numbers to 10. The children will also be looking at the features of 3D shapes, as well as copying and completing some repeating patterns.

Understanding the World

Through our topic work, we have been thinking a lot about environmental issues like pollution and endangered animals and their habitats. We collected litter in our school grounds and learnt how to look after Earth by turning lights off when we’re not in the room and taps off when we are not using them. 

RE

In our RE lessons we have been thinking about special times, such as World Religion Day and Chinese New Year. After the half-term, the children will explore plants and growing through science investigation. We will for signs of spring in our playground such as blossom, buds, insects and daffodils. The children will explore seeds inside of fruit, as well as planting beans, seeds and bulbs to see how they grow. As part of our R.E. the children will be learning about the events of the holy week, re-enact Palm Sunday and the Last Supper, as well as learn about the importance of Easter.

Expressive Art and Design

Chinese New Year is a special time for many of our families at school. We will celebrate this in the classroom with stories, videos, photos, creative activities, dance and music. In art, the children have learnt about how different textiles are made and what they are used for. The children created their own textured collage of a dragon using a range of red materials, such as feathers, felt and wool. They also designed and made their own Chinese dragon sock puppet. After the half-term, our unit in art is printing. The children will use their skills learnt to create rainbow fish by printing scales with celery. They will also make their own mono-prints, by using cotton buds to carve out a patterned design before printing it onto paper. The children will worked with our artist in residence-. They used their new skills to create some fantastic watercolour prints.

Personal, social and emotional development

The children have continued their work with Boris during our HeartSmart lessons. They had a great time making a real life Boris the Robot with boxes! We have also been learning about our rules and routines in reception.  The children also continued their work with Boris with the topic ‘Don’t Forget to Let Love In’. The children started to think about how special they are and find ways that they can love themselves. The children also learned about very important topics such as anti-bullying week, where we coloured different patterns on Elmer the elephant to celebrate differences and learned that “there is only one of me”. They learned new vocabulary to celebrate our differences such as the word “unique”.

Physical development

During this term we have introduced street dance to the children. The aim of the sessions is to engage the children and grow their confidence whilst performing to their peers. The children have learnt a variety of dance moves which they have put into a routine to a song from the film Matilda. We have also done some games which involve lots of group work as well as working as an individual, which encouraged creativity and freestyle. After the half-term, we will introduce gymnastics.  The children will be working on their balance, coordination, jumping, skipping, running and overall fitness. The children have all been very engaged in their P.E. lessons and enjoy using the equipment.

 

TOPIC NAMES Understanding the World EAD (Expressive Arts and Design PSED RE Physical Development Literacy (Reading and Writing) Maths
Reception

SPRING

 

Toys/ Life in the past

ART 31, 13,24

 

 

 

 

Growing (Fruit and Veg)

ART24,29

 

ICT ARTICLE 17

Materials

 

Chinese New Year

 

Spring and Seasonal Change

 

Plant growth

 

 

Mother’s Day

 

Easter

 

(Everyday technology

keyboard skills, typing our names and words

 

Focus on E-safety)

 

Textiles- Spr 1

Printing – Spr 2

 

Dance- Fictional characters (Julia Donaldson)

 

Music (Materials)-

Recycled robot song

Make instruments with recycled objects

 

Music (Plant growth)-

Growth and Change (Loud and Quiet)

Sunflower seeds song

Growing up song

 

Moving patterns (Structure)/Going Places (High and Low)

 

Role play-Toy shop/museum, garden centre, Jack and the Beanstalk

Heartsmart – Too much selfie isn’t healthy (I love others)

 

Heartsmart – Don’t rub it in, rub it out! (I am a good friend)

 

Express feeling and think about the feelings of others, think about the perspective of others, talk about good health/wellbeing inc screentime.

See self as a valuable individual and build respectful relationships.

The Stories Jesus Heard (The Bible)

The Stories Jesus Told

(Parables)

Easter

 

Holi (Hindu festival)

 

Values- Forgiveness, compassion and Love

As above including: Gross Motor

Continue FMS, Begin to progress towards a more fluent style of moving, with developing control and grace

▪Develop overall body-strength, balance, co-ordination and agility.

▪Use their core muscle strength to achieve a good posture when sitting at a table or sitting on the floor 

▪Combine different movements with ease and fluency

▪Confidently and safely use a range of large and small apparatus indoors and outside, alone and in a group

▪Further develop and refine a range of ball skills including:  passing, batting and aiming

Fine Motor

▪Begin to develop the foundations of handwriting style which is fast, accurate and efficient, consolidating: Effective pencil grip, Correct letter formation

In addition- e-safety, road safety, managing risks.

PE- Balance (gym), Beanbag skills (invasion)

Reading – (Phase 2/3 letters and sounds phonics)

Begin to use and understand some recently introduced vocabulary during discussions about stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems and during role play…fiction, non-fiction, set

Retell story in small world / role play (in correct sequence

Take on role of character using some story language

Talk about likes and dislikes of texts, rhymes and poems

Choose a book and begin to explain why …because

Begin to anticipate – where appropriate – some key events in stories …predict / prediction

Oral blending and segmenting – Say the sound for each letter of the alphabet, double letters, consonant digraph.

Begin to read words consistent with their phonic knowledge

CVC words

▪               Read some common exception words

▪               Read simple phrases / sentences.

Writing

▪Form most lower-case and capital letter correctly

▪Spell words by identifying the sounds and then writing the sound with letter/s, using taught GPCs  – CVC words

▪Write captions/phrases and begin to write simple sentences using known GPCs …sentence, full stop, capital letter- Include word spacing

Orally rehearse caption of sentence before writing

▪Re-read what they have written to make sure it makes sense 

▪Begin to write a variety of □ fiction and non-fiction sentences / captions

WRITE STUFF- Writing sentences in pairs moving to Just Me sentences

 

Introducing zero,

Comparing numbers to 5 Composition of 4 & 5

Compare Mass and capacity- Full and Empty, Hold most, least, heavier, lighter than.

Numbers- 6, 7 & 8,

Making pairs and combining 2 groups

Length & Height- longer, shorter, taller, breadth- narrower, wider.

Time- Sequencing

Comparing 9 and 10, number bonds to 10.

3D shape and pattern- ABB, AAB, AABB, AABBB.

 

Homework Leaflet-Homework leaflet

Class newsletter Reception Spring 2 2024

Spring 2 2024 Topic web growing