The Reception Team:

RB             RF

Miss Brunt     Mrs Foord

  Mrs Alizadeh   Ms Brennan

Miss Vincent     Miss Anjam

                    Ms Lamey

General Reminders
 

Water Bottles, Wellies, Book Bags and PE kits
Please could you ensure that your child brings a named water bottle to school every day.

We also ask that you bring in a pair of wellies, which will be kept in school, from your child's first week so they can access our outdoor learning environment. 

To help your child carry important letters and shared/guided reading books, they need to bring a St Peter's school book bag to school each day and not a backpack. We have limited space in our cloakrooms but each child has a designated tray for their book bag.

PE lessons kits must be kept in school on your child's peg. 

Important Dates:
Please note dates may change so keep a check on this webpage. 

Wednesday 31st January - Dough Workshop

Monday 12th February - Half Term

Tuesday 27th February AM - RB Cathedral Visit

TBC - RF Cathedral Visit

Thursday 7th March - World Book Day

Friday 8th March - Mother's Day Assembly

Monday 25th March - Easter Holiday

Our Curriculum 

Religious education 

In Reception at St Peter's we follow the Jack in the Box scheme which has been developed by Early Specialists. Our worship sessions follow a familiar, repeated pattern with fun songs set to well-known tunes and a variety of learning strategies guaranteed to engage our children in the Bible stories. Children travel with Jack to meet the Big Bible Heroes of the Old Testament and then on to learn all about Jesus and his love for the world, and the adventures of his friends and followers. This term we will be learning stories such as Jesus feeds the 5000, Zaccheaus the tax collector, The good Simaritan and Jesus walks on water.

 We also follow the Understanding Christianity scheme where each unit takes a core concept and gives a key question through which to explore the concept. The unit identifies the knowledge ‘building blocks’ and focused outcomes that are expected of pupils by the end of teaching. Our key question is 'Why is the word of God so important to Christians?'

Phonics

We have now completed the Firm Foundations stage where the children have secured a strong sound processing system which is critical to enjoyment and success in children’s later reading and writing skills. We have also completed Basics Two  where the children have learnt at least one spelling for 18 of the 44 sounds of the English language. Most children can hear up to 3 sounds in words, recognise spellings and read and write simple CVC words with the 18 spellings for sounds. Most children are able to read decodeable texts with The Basics Two spellings and make phonetically plausible attempts in their emerging stages of spelling in their writing journey.

We are now moving on to Basics 3. Basics Three teaches children the spellings for the further 26 of the 44 sounds of the English language. Children will use their auditory processing and memory skills from Firm Foundations in Phonics One and their Basics Two skills to continue to recognise the spellings for the sound with Sam, segment and build with Seb and Bill, read and blend with Rex and Ben and write with Ron. They will continue to learn the early concepts of 'Choose to Use' with Suze for some further multiple spellings for sounds and an introduction to 'Switch it' with Mitch for alternative pronunciations of spellings for sounds. Children will learn their tricky words with Tess and read nonsense words with Nan.

Literacy

 Firstly this term, Reception will be learning about Winter. The children will be learning a poem about Winter and then adapting it to make their own version. While learning the poem, we will be looking at words that rhyme and making rhyming strings. 

This term we will also learning about 'People Who Help Us' in our community. The children will be researching facts about different 'People Who Help Us', though exploring and learning how to use non-fiction texts and appropriate websites. Using the facts we have collected, the children will then create a 'People Who Help Us' poster and write simple sentences about the people in our community. We will also be inviting visitors into school to talk about their jobs and going out about exploring our community, as well as going to the local farm. 

  All of the children will have daily opportunities to write inside and outside the classroom. We will be building on all of the strategies they have learnt in phonics lessons to help the children spell and read words confidently.  

Mathematics

At St Peter's we use White Rose to plan and deliver structured lessons which cover the statutory requirements of the 'Development Matters' document in order to meet the Early Learning Goals Assessment at the end of the Reception year.  

Last term we focused on Number and Place Value by teaching the children the key principles of counting.

We will start this term by recapping all the maths concepts to five, this is called 'Five Alive'. The children will be involved in activities where they can consolidate subitising up to five, counting on and back one more and less. The children will also learn the different ways numbers up to 5 are made, for example, three and two make five and one and four make 5.  The children should be able to say the different ways by the end of Reception up to 5.

Later on in the term we will teach the children about weight and capacity, height, length and time. The children will make direct comparisons and will be encouraged to use the correct language to describe length, height, time, weight and capacity. 

The children will then begin to learn about six, seven, and eight. This section of the White Rose scheme is called, 'Growing 6, 7, 8'. This is where our number knowledge begin to grow further. The children will have opportunities to explore these numbers, adding 1 more or subtracting 1 less, finding out how different amounts of objects make six, seven and eight, as well as, doubling numbers and finding out which numbers are odd and which are even. 

The children will also be exploring 3D Shapes and then moving onto numbers nine and ten. 

Understanding the World

As part of our on going 'Me and My Community' topic, the children will be learning about the 'People Who Help Us' in our community (Harborne). We will be thinking about what makes a community, what buildings do we have, what places do we visit, comparing old and new buildings and what it means to be part of a city (Birmingham) and how does it differ from the countryside, thinking about the similarities and differences. 

This term will continue to learn about the four seasons. The children will be learning about Winter, then about Spring. The children will have the opportunity to explore the weather, make predictions and record the weather each day and discuss how the weather changes over time. What changes do we notice?

The children will also be learning about what makes a healthy body and we will have a 'healthy' week, where the children will have the opportunity to carry out some science experiments, make healthy food and be involved a range of physical activities. 

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

The children will be involved within a weekly small group circle time. This term the focus is on rules which is linked to the 'British Values' scheme. This begins with the children thinking about what rules are, why we need them, coming up with rules for the classroom and thinking about rules they follow at home and in different places (in the car). The children will have the opportunities to express their ideas and thoughts and any feeling or worries they may have.

SCARF

At St. Peters we use SCARF to support the promotion of positive behaviour, mental health, wellbeing, resilience and achievement. This half term in Reception we will be focusing on the unit ‘Keeping Safe’. We will be thinking about what is safe to go into our bodies, keeping safe online and people who help me keep safe.

Physical Development

The key focus for this term is dance. We will be exploring and remembering actions considering level, shape and direction, exploring movement using a prop with control and coordination, move with control and co-ordination expressing ideas through movement, as well as, remember and repeat actions, moving in time with music and exploring actions in response to a theme and begin to use counts in dance

Expressive Arts and Design

This term the children will be introduced to 'form'. We will look at the work of Lisa Stevens who was a sculptor for Aardman Animations who created characters for Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit films. The children will have a chance to use lots of malleable materials including Play-Doh, clay and salt dough to create their own characters and work in the style of Lisa Stevens. They will be taught to use a variety of tools as well as using manmade, recycled and natural materials to impress items to apply simple decoration.

In art we will learn about 3 different types of art, sculpture, painting and drawing. We will teach the children that although they are made using different mediums and look different and the are types of art. We will then go on to learning about Kazimir Malevich and his abstract art. Then the children will have a go at creating their own piece of art-work.  

In fortnightly guided drawing sessions, the teacher will model a variety of techniques and tools linked to the skills the children have been learning in their EAD lessons. 

Also, every week the children will take part in a music lesson. They start by learning different songs and thinking about their breathing techniques. Within this the children are taught about pitch, tempo, pulse and rhythm. They also have the opportunity to play the glockenspiel.

Wow, what an exciting term ahead it will be!