Welcome to Reception - EYFS Classes!

Reception | Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Welcome to Reception, also known as the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). We are very proud to be a Leading Foundation Stage in Lancashire.

During your time in Reception, you will meet lots of new friends, learn many new skills and grow in confidence every day.

In Reception, we have the Hedgehogs and Badgers class, but we all enjoy doing our learning together, both in the classroom and outdoors. We have lots of ‘challenge cards’ in our indoor and outdoor classrooms, which help to make you a better learner and achieve your potential.

We hope that parents can help with this, by discussing your child’s learning with them every day, listening to them read and encouraging writing practise and maths activities.

Have a look at the other exciting activities that we do in and out of school and keep a look out for updates on ‘Class Dojos’, where we share your child’s achievements from their Learning Journey.

Enjoy your learning…

In Reception, we encourage good listening and attention skills through paired work, group sessions and whole class learning. Children enjoy communicating with their friends and adults, sharing their experiences and discussing their learning.

You can help your child’s speaking and understanding skills by sharing stories, asking ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions and encouraging them to use new and exciting vocabulary.

At Park, we have a Speech and Language Therapist who works with us from ‘Speech Bubble’ on a weekly basis. Staff are also highly skilled in delivering speech and language programmes and doing talking sessions.

We will inform you on your child’s Communication and Language Development during the year and report on this in July.

In Reception, we know that developing gross and fine motor skills are so important. We have lots of fun during the year with many activities to develop Fine and Gross Motor Skills. In PE sessions, children learn to develop the Fundamental Movement Skills, ball skills and how to join in with group games. We also work on developing the awareness of keeping safe and healthy, by knowing about a healthy diet, exercise and looking after our bodies. We have lots of exciting opportunities to develop fine motor skills and sessions to help with emerging writers, as well as using scissors and tools in the classroom.

You can help your child to be more independent by encouraging them to get dressed and undressed on their own, as well as be able to fasten zips and shoe laces.

PE Sessions PE will be on a Wednesday and Friday. Please can you ensure that your child has a PE kit in school every day, with every item clearly named. Earrings should not be worn for school on these days. You can help your child to be more independent by encouraging them to get dressed and undressed on their own, as well as be able to fasten zips and shoe laces.

Our children really enjoy our maths sessions and are eager to try one of our ‘maths challenges’. In our daily maths sessions, we learn skills in number, shape, space and measures. Children are encouraged to talk about problem solving and apply their skills in the provision in the indoor and outdoor classrooms.

By the end of Reception, it is expected that children have a deep understanding of number to 10, including the composition of each number, as well as automatically recall (without reference to rhymes, counting or other aids) number bonds up to 5 (including subtraction facts) and some number bonds to 10, including double facts. They also learn to verbally count beyond 20, recognising the pattern of the counting system; In Shape, children learn to name and describe 2D and 3D shapes, talk about size and weight and understand position, time and money.

Parents are invited into school for our Maths Activity Morning, where you will be able to work with our child on activities to encourage your child achieving their potential in maths.

At home, there are many activities you can do, such as baking, discussing shapes and sizes of everyday objects, or paying for items from your shopping list. By playing and talking with your child, you will be helping their mathematical development along the way!

We will inform you on your child’s Mathematical Development during the year and report on this in July.

We are very proud of the progress that our children make in reading and writing in Reception. We have phonics sessions every day, following ‘Anima Phonics’. We encourage the children to use the correct vocabulary (phoneme, grapheme, digraph, trigraph) and to use the ‘pure’ sound when reading and writing. Parents are invited into school to observe phonics lessons, so that you can use the same techniques to help your child at home.

Your child will have weekly reading and spellings to do at home , which matches the phonics scheme. It is important that children work on their ‘phonics book’ at home, ideally every day to ensure that they are steadily moving through the phonics phases in time for Year 1. They will receive lists of words to read and spell.

Comprehension is very important to develop as a reader. We read daily stories to the children, looking at both fiction and non-fiction books which match our topic. Children learn to talk about the title, setting, characters, events and answer ‘why’ and ‘how do you know? questions about what they have read.

Writing Children work on their handwriting on a daily basis, learning how to form letters and sit them on the line in their guided sessions. We also have lots of opportunities to write in our indoor and outdoor classrooms and we encourage this to be done independently, so that children apply their phonics skills. We use ‘Talk for Writing’ in Reception, where we learn stories and actions, which helps to make our children better writers. We celebrate good writing with our ‘Author of the Week’ certificate. By the end of Reception, it is expected that children can read and write sentences, securely using Phase 3 phonics and working within Phase 4 phonics. We also encourage capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. We will inform you on your child’s Literacy Development during the year and report on this in July.

Below we provide some suggested online resources that we feel would benefit your child at this stage of their development.

http://www.crickweb.co.uk – for games

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk – as a guide for parents and reading

http://www.topmarks.co.uk – General topic related educational resources

https://www.animaphonics.com/ – a guide for parents

http://www.bbc.co.uk – General games

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zf2yf4j BBC Phase 2 and 3 phonics

Statutory Framework

School Readiness

Speech and Language

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Children in EYFS learn in many different ways. Staff regularly observe the children to match activities to their learning styles and encourage challenge by trying new ways to learn. Below are the Characteristics of Effective Learning and examples of what this learning might look like. Each day, we celebrate children who have shown the Learning Powers of ‘Engagement’, ‘Motivation’ and ‘Thinking’.

Keep a look out for your child coming home with a ‘Super’ sticker and ask them about what learning skill they have shown today.

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Playing and exploring – Engagement
Finding out and exploring
Playing with what they know
Being willing to ‘have a go’

Active learning – Motivation

Being involved and concentrating
Keeping trying
Enjoying achieving what they set out to do

Creating and thinking critically – Thinking

Having their own ideas
Making links
Choosing ways to do things

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

In Reception, we know that learning cannot take place until a child has good personal, social and emotional skills. We encourage sharing, taking turns and finding compromise with others.

Children grow in self-confidence and independence in our Reception classes and learn how to follow the school rules, manage their behaviour and form positive relationships with others. This is how to be a ‘Park Child’! We have Circle Time sessions, where we talk, listen, and show sensitivity to our friends. We follow Coram SCARF and in conjunction with our Global Themes, we talk and learn about our own lives and the lives of others, helping our children to become happy and healthy members of society.

We will inform you on your child’s Personal, Social and Emotional Development during the year and report on this in July.