Reception
Spring Term
Friday 17th January 2025
Dear Parents and Carers,
What a fantastic week we have had! There has been an abundance of wow moments. We have been blown away by the children’s awareness of their next steps in ILT and how hard they have tried to work on them. We have had so many children sharing their learning with us and listening to feedback and acting on it. Many children have begun to give themselves feedback and they have shown us the progress they have made on their own. The ‘can-do’ attitude is improving immensely and many children are now able to find a challenge and work on it independently. We are still supporting children with coming up with plans and we do this as a class so that the children access lots of different ideas. Conversations at home about what they might do in a specific area will definitely help. The areas they can access are: clay, paint, DT, construction, mark making, reading, large spaces for dancing and movement (coming next week and a stage outside when the weather is ok), a loose parts area and of course, outside.
Tapestry ILT and Reading Summaries
Please read and comment on your child’s summary so you can support them with their next steps.
Handwriting
Next week we will begin to teach accurate letter formation. We will begin with the Long Legged Giraffe letters (l, i, t, u, j and y). This year, there are 5 handwriting certificates to collect. There is one for each letter group and a name writing one. We would like as many children as possible to get all 5 before the end of the academic year. The sooner children form their letters accurately the easier their writing journey will be.
Writing
This is the term when children make a lot of progress with their writing capabilities and we are seeing this already. We have been writing more in phonics sessions. When children write, we are NOT focusing on accuracy of spelling but giving the children the confidence to say a word slowly and record the sounds that they can hear. When we model, we do model accuracy but focus on the parts they can do independently, introducing other aspects of spelling through modelling, but with no expectation that they use these e.g. silent letters, suffixes like ly, ing etc. All we want for the children at this point is that they are happy to have a go and show resilience and a ‘can do’ attitude. So far, so good. We have been impressed with the children’s willingness to try and not be concerned about accuracy. We would never want to put the children off believing they are writers (which they are) by worrying them about spelling accuracy. This focus comes later.
Phonics Play
We gave advice on the Tapestry summaries for each child related to phonics and reading. We always recommend using Phonics Play and particularly Tricky Trucks. We have now introduced all the Phase 2 and 3 words. We would like the children to be able to read all of these instantly, and recognise them in books by the end of the year. The login details are:
Username: Forest01
Password: Newlaithes01
Reading
There has been a lot of progress this week and many children are moving through the book bands. Next week we will start to introduce more Phase 3 sounds in readiness for Red B and Yellow band.
Maths
This week we have been recapping the children’s number fact knowledge – doubles to 5 and bonds from 1 to 5. They are really starting to embed these facts and be able to apply them quickly.
This week we have focused on number bonds. Can your child tell you the bonds for 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1? Bonds are a pair of numbers which make a given total, so the bonds for 5 are 5 and 0, 4 and 1 and 3 and 2. By June, the children need to be able to instantly recall all the addition and subtraction facts for each of the numbers. At the moment we are only focusing on addition (see above). We have explored the meaning of the = sign this week. It is a balance sign and the same amount needs to be on either side of it. We have used pictures to illustrate this. So, one heart = one heart. It is important to see this sign as a sign of balance and not ‘and now put the answer’. The latter is a misconception which will cause a child issues in Key Stage 2 and high school, so we teach it accurately from the start.
Thanks so much for your continued support.
Kind Regards,
The Reception Team