Welcome to Reception Class!
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Reception Class Teacher: Miss Cartwright
Reception Class Teaching Assistants: Mrs Delgiudice (Mrs D), Mrs Hughes and Mrs Hawley
At St Josephs’ Early Years (Pre-school and Reception Class) we recognise the importance of giving our children the best possible start to their education by planning and implementing teaching and learning opportunities that support them in reaching their full potential! We provide a fun and engaging curriculum, working with parents and families to prepare children well for Year One and beyond.
- Please read our EYFS Curriculum Policy, refer to the EYFS Development Matters and see our Class Overview to find out all about children's learning in Reception class. Here are all of the Reception class prayers that we learn off by heart over the course of the school year.
PE Days
In Reception Class we have indoor PE on Wednesdays and outdoor PE on Fridays. .
Guided Reading and Library books
Each week during their guided reading your child will explore a book over three sessions. The first session will usually focus upon decoding (sounding out words and blending them to read), the second session involves developing comprehension (e.g. discussing what happened in the story, finding out meaning of new words, talking about what characters did and why), while the third session is focused upon developing children's fluency and prosody (reading words on sight and beginning to use expression to 'read like a storyteller'). The fully decodable book that your child has studied will then go home for you to read together, along with a new 'grappling' book for your child to read to you. Your child will also have a library book for you to read to them. The guided reading and grappler books will be linked to your child's phonics knowledge and their daily phonics sessions in school.
Your child's books and their Reading Log book will be sent home in their bags on Thursdays. Please could you write in the titles of all three books and make a note every week in your child's reading log about how they have gotten on.
Please could you send your child's guided reading, grappler and library books back to school every Thursday morning so that they can be changed.
A gentle reminder that non-returned books incur a charge of £5 per book. Returning books on time is crucial for us to ensure that packs of books are ready for the next group to use the following week and we really appreciate your support in ensuring they are returned promptly.
Recommended Reading Lists
Please see this Reception class recommended reading list which includes quality texts for children in Reception Class.
Monster Phonics
In Reception class to Year 2 children engage in Monster Phonics sessions on a daily basis where they are taught letter sounds, tricky words and high frequency words. Monster Phonics is a highly advanced multisensory scheme. It uses 10 monsters to categorise all sounds into 10 simple areas. This accelerates learning, providing an easy and fun memory cue for children. The colour-coded grapheme system is unique to Monster Phonics; each coloured grapheme is paired with a monster character that makes the same sound to give audio-visual prompts that help children ‘see’ each sound within a word and pronounce it correctly. The Monster Phonics program is in line with letters and sounds and our guided reading system.
Here are the phonics sounds that we learn in Reception Class:
Here are the 'tricky words' and 'decodable words' that we learn each term in Reception Class:
Show and Tell Themes
Useful websites for children at home:
Monster Phonics. St Joseph's follows the fantastic, multi-sensory Monster Phonics program to deliver phonics in school! Once your child starts school with us we send you login details to access these fantastic resources and support your child's learning at home.
Jack Harmann songs on YouTube. An enormous range of maths songs from counting to 20, to learning doubles and 3D shapes!
Topmarks. A super selection of online maths games. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/3-5-years/counting
Teach your monster to read. A very useful app to support your child alongside our Monster Phonics program in learning their phase 2 phonics sounds and to embed and support your child with learning tricky words and phase 3 phonics.
Numberblocks. We incorporate Numberblocks into our number mastery maths lessons in Reception Class! You can access fun activities and episodes here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/numberblocks
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