Red 2022 - 2023

Miss Watkins

Welcome to Red Class!

Red Class is the Early Years Foundation Stage (reception) class here at Weston. We aim to teach the EYFS curriculum with a vairety of engaging adult-led and child-initiated activities. We strive to create a happy and safe learning environment where the children are at the heart of all we do. We believe that children's first experiences of school are of great importance and help to shape a lifelong love of learning.

This is what we will be learning about in the Spring term:

Communication and Language:

This half term the children are learning to retell the children’s classic ‘Whatever Next!’. There will also be a poem, song and rhyme of the week that children will learn in order to help extend the breadth of their vocabulary. We will explore lots of different ‘WOW’ words in class that we have taken from different stories, poems non-fiction texts and videos!

Physical Development:

The children will be encouraged to experiment with different ways of moving with control and to negotiate spaces, through outdoor activities, dance and P.E. There will be a focus on eating healthily and the importance of exercise in a balanced lifestyle. Alongside developing gross motor skills, children will complete various activities that improve fine-motor skills, including gripping pencils with control when writing. The children will take part in weekly ‘Soccer Lion’ sessions, where they will learn early football skills and use these skills in team work building exercises.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development:

This area involves the children gaining confidence in speaking to their peers, familiar and unfamiliar adults, and in front of a group. We will continue to encourage ‘talk partner’ work, where children pair up with different members of the class to improve social skills. The children will be encouraged to manage their own feelings and begin to negotiate and solve problems with others. We encourage the children to bring any books, creations etc linked with our topics to ’show and tell’ to the rest of the class.

Literacy:

This term we will begin with exploring fictional and non-fictional texts based on our topic of ‘Space’. The children will write lists, labels, speech bubbles, facts, and simple sentences. We will greatly encourage the children to become more independent writers and to improve their letter formation.

Read Write Inc.:

The children will continue to learn new letters and sounds, particularly set 2 sounds which are all ‘special friend’ sounds. We will focus on segmenting and blending CVC (mop), CCVC (frog) words and words that include our new ‘special friends’ (play). Please practise spelling out simple three- and four-letter words at home for extra support. If you have any questions or concerns about your child’s reading skills, or would like to know how to further support their learning, please speak to a member of the EYFS team. We will continue to provide Friday ‘Stay and Learn’ sessions to support early reading and writing.

Mathematics:

This term we will cover the following:
- Learn to count reliably to 10
- Recognise the numerals 1-10.
-Explore Ten Town characters 1-10.
- Recognise different representations of numbers up to 10 e.g. a ten frame, number shapes.
- Recognise a 10 frame and know that when it is full it represents 10.
- Understand that even if the order or arrangement changes, the number stays the same.
- Represent the numbers 6–10 on a ten frame
- Recognise that they can count on using a ten frame, understanding that a full row is 5
-Count 6–10 objects out from a larger group.
The children will extend learning further through differentiated continuous provision and cheeky challenges!

Understanding the World:

To start with, the children will explore ‘light and dark’’ in which we will think about similarities and differences of natural and artificial light. The children will discuss the differences between villages and towns and look at a map to explore Weston and Crewe.
Spring B will include children learning about different materials, as well as extending their life cycle knowledge further by looking at the life cycle of a frog.

Expressive Arts and Design:

The children will use a variety of media and materials in their continuous provision. They will use the skills learnt to create their own artwork related to aliens and space which will include, planet painting, rocket making and split-pin aliens.

PE:

The children will have two P.E. sessions. Outdoor PE will be taught on a Tuesday. Indoor PE will be taught on a Friday with Soccer Lions. In the Spring term, children will be working to improve their body-strength, balance, coordination and agility. On these days, the children will need to come to school dressed in their P.E. uniform: navy shorts and light blue t-shirt; navy tracksuit and light blue t-shirt. No logos or football kits. Trainers should be plain black. All long hair should be tied back and earrings should be removed.

Homework:

Weekly recaps will continue to be sent out every Friday on class dojo. These weekly recaps will focus on ‘WOW’ words that we have looked at in class, weekly phonics sounds, High frequency words and 2 cheeky challenges based around literacy and maths objectives. In addition, we will also continue to send home school books to share with your child. Please also continue to practise your child’s key words for Autumn and Spring term. We find that writing them out and using them as flash cards often help the children to learn them.

Useful Information:

It is expected that children are to read at home every night. We give out three school books to take home every week as well as online books. Two of the books sent home will contain decodable words as well as 'tricky words' the children will not be able to sound out but must recognise on sight, the other 'ditty book' follows our phonic scheme and children should be able to decode the words using their phonic knowledge. Please log on to 'bug club' to access books that are assigned to your child, they should match their reading level.

https://www.activelearnprimary.co.uk/login?c=0 (Link for bug club)

This year, we are using Tapestry, an online learning journal tool, to collect observations and document your child's learning. Please add to the journal when you can to give us a whole picture of your child.

https://tapestryjournal.com/