Moordown St. John's C of E Primary School

In Reception we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Curriculum. There are seven areas of learning and development covered in Reception. Three areas are particularly important for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn and to thrive. These three areas, known here as the prime areas, are:

personal, social and emotional development;
physical development; and
communication and language

There are also four specific areas of learning and development, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied. The specific areas are:

English;
mathematics;
understanding the world; and
expressive arts and design.

In planning and guiding children’s activities, practitioners are guided by the different ways that children learn. Three characteristics of effective teaching and learning are:

playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’;
active learning – children keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements; and
creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

Click on the Curriculum Statement to see what we are focussing on this term.
Curriculum Statement Spring (2023)

Reading

From the first full time days in Reception, children begin work learning to recognise and say letter sounds. Synthetic phonics (sounding out each letter sound in a word) is of primary importance in our teaching of reading. In their bookbags, children will bring home the letter sounds they have been learning. Children will have simple reading books in their bag which provide opportunities for them to practise the letter sounds they are learning. We recommend that children look at their sound cards and share their reading book with an adult at home for 10min every night. The children get a Marvellous Me badge for 5 reads a week.

Spellings

We start testing spellings after February half term and these are based on tricky words. We have a new list every two weeks and can practice on spelling bee.

Maths

Counting is one of our main focuses in Reception and we encourage parents to practise counting at home particularly counting forwards and backwards to 20, recognising, ordering and writing numerals. We advise parents to use the mathematical language at home e.g. longer, shorter, curved, straight, behind, next to which helps children to learn the concepts of shape, space and measure.

Home Learning

Home Learning – Spring 2 – 2023

Home learning is suggested activities that are linked to our topic and our Reading bingo sheet where the children can earn Marvellous Me badges for completing activities. We sometimes send home holiday homework to help them prepare for a new topic.

We really value parents input, we often send home ‘WOW’ sheets for you to record something your child has done at home that you would like to share with us e.g. riding a bike without stabilizers. We also encourage parents to write in their child’s ‘Learning Journey’ book as this gives us a fuller picture of the children.