Acorns
Hello, and a very warm welcome to Acorn class!
We hope you are ready for an exciting journey into term 1.
At Brenzett Primary School, we believe that our Early Years Foundation Stage provides children with firm foundations to build upon and create life-long learners. It is our intent that children develop emotionally, creatively, verbally, physically, spiritually and intellectually. We set high expectations for all areas of our curriculum and create knowledge-rich topics, cater to the children’s interests, to support the children’s cultural capital. At Brenzett, we inspire children to have a ‘love of learning’ and support the development of the ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’. We value the uniqueness of every single child that enters our classroom and ensure all their needs are met to help children to achieve their full potential.
The staff in Reception are dedicated to ensuring the children have the best possible start to their school adventure. We strive to ensure our children feel safe and loved in our classroom as if it were a home from home. Here in Acorns you will often find us in the garden digging up worms, doing something amazing or practising our handwriting and counting.
Our reception class follow the EYFS framework https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1170108/EYFS_framework_from_September_2023.pdf and use the Development Matters as a supportive guide alongside the statutory framework. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1005585/6.7534_DfE_Development_Matters_Report_and_illustrations_web.pdf
The framework has seven categories. These are:
The Prime Areas:-
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
And Specific Areas:-
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts
Who is who?
I'm Miss Twomey, and I am the Reception class teacher here at Brenzett. You will often find me digging in our flower beds hunting for various insects and spotting birds in our trees!
Miss Pepler is our class supporting hero in Acorns. You will always find her playing in the mud with dinosaurs or jumping around on the stage singing lots of songs!
What do we get up to?
Below, you will find our weekly timetable filled with all the subjects and lessons for this term.
Acorns Weekly Timetable for this term:
As we begin our journey into starting school, we take priority this term in making sure children build positive, strong relationships with their new teachers and peers. We plan activities that will help children build on their communication and language as well as develop a love for learning in our Discovery Time.
NOTICES:
Please ensure all school uniform is clearly labelled.
Children will need a drinks bottle to be used in the classroom, please ensure your child arrives to school with one.
Children will need a full PE kit clearly labelled to be worn on a Monday.
Please bring in Forest School kit (to be used on Tuesdays), which needs to include; long trousers, long sleeved top, a long sleeved jumper, a coat, spare socks and underwear and welly boots. These can all be kept at school.
READING:
Our focus within reading is to build oral fluency and comprehension. All children will now have a picture book. Please ensure you read with your child every evening. Please sign and date after you have read with them, so we can keep up to date with how our little bookworms are doing with their reading during their early stages of reading for pleasure. Question what events happen in the story, and make them reflect on what they have read. These questioning skills help develop your child's comprehension.
READING COMPETITION:
This term we will be continuing with the rest of the year groups in the reading raffle competition. The aim is, your child will read for 10 days at home. They will however, still be reading 3 times a week with an adult at school. After the 10 days of reading at home, your child will be awarded a bronze award, they will then complete another 10 days for their silver award and a further 10 days for their gold award. After this, they will be given a raffle ticket after every 10 days to be put into the draw to win a prize at the end of the term. The more they read, the more of a chance they have to win.
THIS TERM:
In Term 1 we will be learning...
Our Topic this term is 'All about me' as well as 'changes in Autumn'. We are exploring who we are within the community, what makes me, me! And identifying who lives in our houses and family. At the end of term, we will be exploring Autumn and what happens to the leaves and why are some animals asleep in the daytime but awake at night. We will be developing a broad understanding of our interests, and developing independence in the Prime Areas of learning.
In Literacy, we will be reading a variety of books that link to our topic for this term. We will be reading the stories as a class, discussing the elements of the story and reflecting on how they impact and reflect our lives. We will be developing our sound recognition and continuing to create marks onto paper. We are recognising and writing our names, and will be finding initial sounds at the beginning of words as well as orally blending CVC words. We will be beginning our phonics journey into learning our sounds to develop our understanding of our phonological awareness in Read, Write inc.
Drawing Club:
We use Drawing Club at Brenzett to link our literacy and topics together. Drawing club is a magnificent sneaky way to build children's imagination through deeper thinking, as we focus on our book for that week looking at Character, Setting and Adventure time. Adventure time is where we ask the 'What if' questions to help build children's imagination to think outside the pages; What if the three little pigs house was made of chocolate? What if the leaf thief stole cows instead? What if the Witch in Room on the Broom used a hoover to fly instead? It is a great way for children to link their drawing and writing skills to create their own narrative using their ideas.
In Numeracy, we will be developing our mathematical understanding and reasoning through number bonds and comparing and creating amounts. We are focussing on our 1:1 correspondence and showing our understanding by comparing these to quantities of amounts of numbers to 5. Through the term, we will have a focus of writing our numbers as well as showing our understanding by counting amounts onto tens frames, identifying one more and one less, creating number blocks and using maths within our play and learning.
In Child-Initiated (Discovery time), children will be choosing and playing with resources that interest them, whilst still being engaged in enriching activities to promote deeper thinking. There will be great opportunities for children to bring their learning from Numeracy, Literacy and Topic into their play to deepen their understanding of all the elements in their subject knowledge. Child-initiated play is incredibly important to help children develop their social and emotional understanding, whilst creating those crucial friendships that will help to strengthen their communication and language.
In RE, our theme this term is 'Why is the word God so important to a Christian?'. We will meet Tom and Tessa who will take us on a journey to learn all about what life is like for a Christian. We will begin to learn our school Values and find out what a Christian is and what they do within their places of worship.
In PSHE, we will be looking at Self-Regulation: my feelings with the underpinning themes of;
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Identifying my feelings
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Feelings jars
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Coping strategies
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Describing feelings
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Facial expressions
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Creating a calm corner
In Phonics, here at Brenzett we follow the Read Write inc (RWI) scheme. This term, we have a drive to have keen readers and writers within our reception cohort! Children will be beginning phonics at the same time, ensuring intervention support is readily available to challenge and support their development whilst also building their confidence and understanding. Children are using their knowledge of phonics to help their development and awareness of their reading, writing and blending. This term, we have a great focus on children beginning to form letters correctly and understand our sounds.
Here are the sounds we will be learning below:
KEEP UP WITH US:
Parents, please log in to your Seesaw accounts to access our online learning platform and keep up to date with everything we are getting up to every day. Remember, this is the quickest and easiest way to send and receive messages and updates to and from us.
If you want to see what we are up to in our class, the school Instagram is updated regularly with all the fabulous learning we get up to in Acorns!
If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to talk to me, Miss Twomey. You can easily contact me using Seesaw, where I will be delighted to respond to any messages as quickly as I can. If necessary, catch me in the morning or after school if it is urgent.
Kindest regards,
Miss Twomey.
Medium Term planning for EYFS: