Reception weekly update

Now that the website is up and running I will try and put a weekly update on our class page to fill you in on what we have been doing at school. Hopefully this will be useful to parents whose children choose not to tell them about their time at school but will also be useful to remind you of forthcoming events in reception.

This week in literacy we started by talking about the Christmas holidays and recording a sentence or two. Throughout the week we read books together that most of the children had read at home when they started their independent reading. With the book under the visualiser they were all encouraged to read along. Children wrote sentences about the stories. We are focusing on using a word grid and word book and writing in proper sentences with a capital letter and a full stop.

I have tested the 45 reception key words and allocated spellings according to the results. Spelling tests will start next Friday and you should have received the list for your child to practise.

In maths we have been concentrating on recognition of numbers to 20. This includes being able to put them out in the correct order, answering questions about the order, knowing what is 1 more or 1 less than a number to 10 and then to 20. We practised missing numbers and addition sums. On Friday morning we have maths games and the children brought home a game of Beetle for you to play with them.

In our daily phonics we are learning the stage 3 diagraphs and have learnt and practised ‘ng’ and ‘ai/ay’ this week. Please practise recognition of these daily and point them out to your child when they appear in a word in their reading book or word box.

In our ‘Knowledge and understanding of the world’ we have drawn portraits of one another for display in our classroom. We looked in detail at the indoor hyacinths that we have been growing in class and made collage pictures to show the different parts of them.

In RE we have started to learn about the life of Jesus on earth.

In ICT we have revised how to log on to the computer, open word, change the font to Comic Sans and the size to 20 and type our name with a capital letter and how to drop down onto a new line. Quite a few problems with holding the mouse and accurate clicking but practise makes perfect!

This term we have two sessions of PE a week on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. The sessions are an hour each and the children will be doing dance, indoor athletics, apparatus and games. Please encourage your child to be independent with dressing and undressing.