Welcome to our Early Years and Year 1 class page!

Key Information

We are a class of 20 children. Our teacher is Mrs Benson and our teaching assistants are Mrs Boyd (STA), Miss Hall and Miss Gaythwaite.

• Nursery, Reception and Year 1 have P.E on Tuesdays and Fridays. The Tuesday session only applies to Nursery children who are accessing the wrap around service. Please bring your child to school already in their P.E kit on PE days. 
• Snack is £1 per week or can be paid upfront for the half term. 

• School meals are to be ordered on the school hub website. Reception and Year 1 receive free school meals. Nursery dinners cost £2.20 per day.

• Please make sure that your child brings their book bag to school every day.

• Read at least five times a week to gain Strive for Five. (See further down the page for more details).

Useful Information

- Achievement assembly. Each Friday two children will be selected as our Stars of the Week and two Class Dojo Champions. If this is your child, please remember that they may come in to school the following Thursday in non-uniform.

Useful documents and links

As parents you may find these documents useful when assisting your child's development at home. The curriculum map outlines each of the topics which we will be covering over the school year and the newsletters look at the half termly topics, including any additional information on what will be happening in school.

Goldilocks and The Three Bears

For our topic this half term, we have focused on all things Goldilocks with our Learning Challenge being, 'Why should Goldillcks say sorry?'. To help the children answer this question they have participated in a wide range of activities to help them understand the story in depth. We focused our learning on the version of Goldilocks by M. Alperin but have also read many other versions of the tale. 

So far this half term, the children have made, tasted and described porridge. They have compared old and new bears and created a new chair for baby bear using different construction materials. They have created puppets from wooden spoons and orally described characters from the story and they have also sequenced images from the book to demonstrate their understanding of what happens when. We look forward to seeing what else this topic has to bring.

Seasonal fun

This half term the children have noticed the change in seasons, noticing the change in the trees in our forest and the colours of the leaves. They have also spoken of conkers falling from trees so to expand on this we set up some autumnal areas in the classroom and carried out some adult led activities which linked to autumn. These activities particularly focused on maths and the building of the children’s fine motor skills.

Phonics

Each morning, the Reception and Year 1 children take part in daily phonics sessions, following an adapted version of Read, Write, Inc. to ensure it meets the needs of our children. The Read, Write, Inc. Scheme not only introduces new sounds but introduces the blending of sounds and supports letter formation to support the children in becoming confident writers. In these sessions, the children also have the opportunity to build up their reading fluency, accessing books linked to the sounds that they are learning.

In the Summer term, Year 1 will be sitting the national phonics screening check. Find more useful information about the phonics screening check here - https://www.sats-papers.co.uk/phonics-screening-tests/

Nursery take part in daily fine motor activities and pre- writing tasks and will continue to access phonics using a more sensory approach, whilst building up their communication and interaction skills.

Strive for 5

To achieve Strive for 5 at the end of the half term, your child must read at home 5 times per week for a full half term. If they achieve this, they will receive a prize on the final day of half term. Each time your child reads, please record this in their reading record. 

Below is an image of the 'Strive for 5' display in the EYFS/ Year 1 classroom. Each of the children are runners and their aim is to run from the start point to checkpoint 5, at the top of the mountain, each week. Each checkpoint marks off how many times the children have read each week. The children love to check how well they are doing each day and understand that if they are at checkpoint 2, they need to read 3 more times to get to the top. At the beginning of each week, the children go back to the starting point and begin their weekly reading journey again. 

Mastery Maths

For maths in nursery and reception we use planning linked closely to White Rose. This allows us to teach the children practically while utilising the learning environment. We build upon core principles that allow children to progress their mathematical skills throughout the year, building up their knowledge whilst also reflecting back at skills taught. Creating a mathematically rich learning environment also provides children with opportunities to develop, practice and consolidate their skills in different contexts and using different media. 

We also use Numberblocks to support the cementing of newly learned numeracy areas- all of these videos can be accessed for free on BBC iPlayer. Please use the link below to access them at home.

Alongside our maths lessons, the children enjoy playing different maths game. Some of these games can be found online on Top Marks. Please use the link below to access these.