Reception Year Group Page
🌟 Welcome to Holy Trinity Reception little explorers! 🌟
We are so excited to start your Reception journey and see where our learning takes us. Fire up your listening ears, plug in your thinking brain and get ready to head on an amazing journey through learning with your guides Ms Moulder and Kat!
So far the children have done a great job of starting school and adjusting to all the new routines, rules and environments. They are making lots of new friends and are working as a team. We are so impressed and proud of them!
Over the year we cannot wait to see the heights you will climb!
Our EYFS curriculum aims to allow children:
- 🌎 To explore and be inquisitive about the world around them
- 🧠 To develop the essential skills and knowledge that will underpin future learning
- 🔎 To be creative and problem solve
- 🌱 To have a growth mindset and bounce back from challenges
- 🗣 To speak with confidence and clarity
- 🫂 To care about others and compromise when problems arise
- 🤝 To respect differences and be accepting of others
- 💪 To develop a sense of confidence in themselves and their own abilities
Curriculum Overview
This term we will adventure through a whole range of topics:
- 🪞 All About me! (Getting to know each other and settling into our school)
- 🧚🏻♀️ Fairy tales and Folk Tales (Traditional stories and storytelling)
- 🌎 Around the World (Exploring where we live and some of the amazing countries that make up our planet)
- 🌱 Growing (Exploring plants, animals and our own bodies- what do they need to be healthy? How do they change?)
- 🦗 Minibeasts (Insects and bugs. What is special about them? Where can we find them?)
- 🦹♂️ Superheroes and people who change the world (Fantastic heroes who have and still can make a difference)
In Reception we value the importance of providing inspirational and contextual opportunities for learning. A mix of free play; supported play; direct teaching; and adult-guided learning will ensure that children are able to apply their developing understanding and skills in a range of different contexts. Our planning is structured around termly topics with breadth to meet the goals of the EYFS and provide equal opportunities for all children, regardless of their background. Our planning is designed to challenge our children and help to develop a ‘growth mindset’ when approaching new learning. We believe all children can love learning and become an enthusiastic participant in their own learning journey.
At the beginning of the year our focus is on building strong relationships with the children and creating a secure and supportive environment in which each child feels valued. We introduce routines and rules slowly, building these in line with children’s understanding and ability to settle. Structured activities are also gradually introduced. The majority of the day is structured around self-initiated activities where children’s interests lead their play and learning. Chosen texts and topics provide some planned table top activities and are supported by high quality continuous provision. High-quality adult interaction, with less time spent observing from a distance, ensures that classroom adults know the children very well, and they can plan for their next steps effectively.
Vocabluary
🔤 Communication and language are key to securing learning, and without these, later comprehension and letter reading will be impacted. In Early Years, we work on a serve and return principle, with interaction and communication as the key building block for children’s brain development. With this in mind, we put a high value on developing language and vocabulary; new vocabulary is regularly discussed and children become confident with using this fluently in their own independent play. We expose children to high quality texts and encourage discussion of unfamiliar words and try to put these into context. We utilise Makaton (key signing) to support children’s vocabulary development and help ground word use. In all these methods, we build up children’s use of language through Early years developing from everyday words, through academic and literacy words, to subject specific vocabulary.
Maths
🧮 In maths, we move through the theory of concrete, abstract and pictorial to ensure basic maths skills and understanding are clear. Throughout the day, in both Nursery and Reception, we offer practical opportunities to embed mathematical language and concepts- from completing the register, through to building a tower with the blocks, mathematical opportunities are all around us! Through discussion with adults and play, we develop children’s understanding of counting, number sense, finger gnosis (connecting numbers to their visual representation on fingers) and shape. Children become confident recognising these big ideas and explaining and exploring them in wider contexts.
Classroom Life
In Reception we develop our expectations as the year progresses, and aim to meet the needs of the children as their skills and knowledge blossom. We recognise that children start their journey with us at a variety of starting points. We make certain we consider these starting points so that each and every child has access to a wide-ranging, balanced and differentiated curriculum which takes account of where they have been and where they will go in the future. The transition process is carefully planned throughout the academic year to ensure children and their families are supported as they move through the next chapter of school life. In Reception, the focus will shift to the Early Learning Goals and end of year outcomes, and planning is designed to ensure all children effectively meet these.
As the year progresses, structured activity does become a part of the daily routine. Once children are confident with blending we introduce reading sessions with children in small groups of six. These sessions happen 3 times a week for each group and are designed to encourage a love of reading. The sessions focus on decoding, prosody (reading with expression) and comprehension. At the end of the week the book read with an adult will be sent home for parents to use with their child. We also begin a carousel session daily, with children rotating through the activities over the week. These activities are designed to build on children’s literacy or maths skills and allow open ended exploration.
Afternoons are kept entirely free for ‘Independent learning’ and self-directed activity. Children are able to make their own choices about where they learn best and our EYFS team make sure that there are both inside and outside opportunities for children to access all areas of learning. Our skilled practitioners EYFS team engage with the children to scaffold, challenge, model and extend their learning. This may be modelling sentence structure (Child: “Lion... furry...roar!” Adult: “Wow, a furry lion. He is roaring very loudly!”), to developing children’s ideas for self-initiated activities (“Wow. Those cars are rolling very fast. I wonder how we could get them to go even faster? Could we find a way of using this plank?”). They know when to intervene and when to allow step back and observe.
Support for Parents/Carers
At Holy Trinity we aim to create strong partnerships with parents and endeavour to offer opportunities for parents to be involved with their child’s learning. We believe that a good working partnership with parents brings about the greatest success for children. We will be welcoming parents into school and seeking participation and contribution in the life of the school.
Here are some of the ways you can support your child’s learning and development at home:
- 📖 Read together every day, as part of their regular routine
- 🖼️ Encourage your child to talk about the pictures: How do you think this character is feeling? Why?
- ❓Ask questions: Why did that happen? What will happen next?
- 💬 Encourage your child to retell you the story, in their own words
- 🗣️ Once they know some letter sounds, encourage them to sound out short words or find sounds they know in words.
- 👕 Allow your child to practice dressing and undressing, including using fasteners that they find difficult. Encourage your child to be as independent as possible.
- 🤸🏻♂️ Play with your child indoors and outdoors. Encourage the development of gross motor (larger movements) skills by supporting your child with physical play including climbing and clambering. This will support the development of fine motor (smaller finger movements and pencil control) skills that follow.
- 🎨 Undertake creative and messy activities with your child such as cutting and sticking, finger painting, working with dough or clay.
- 🏫 Take your child to a variety of places to enrich their experiences which can be drawn upon in school. Make time to talk about these and discuss any similarities/differences you encounter.
- 🤝 Encourage good manners.
- 🎒 Encourage your child to be responsible for putting away their own things. They will be encouraged in school to put book bags, coats and jumpers in their correct places from the beginning of the school year. They will also be encouraged to work as a team to put away all equipment at the end of the day.
- 💦 Reinforce independent toileting and also hand washing and drying.
- 🎵 Sing songs and nursery rhymes together. Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they're four years old, they're usually among the best readers by the time they're eight.
- 🔢 Find practical ways to develop your child’s maths knowledge- cooking, building, and shopping together are all great for this!
Learning Resources
Development matters ☀️
BBC parenting site 👨👩👦
What to expect, when? 🕓
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