The class teacher is Miss Inarejos and they are also supported by Mrs Day and Miss Stocker.
In Reception, we aim to prepare children for their school life by providing them with what they need to become independent, interested and inquisitive learners. We also aim to make the children’s first year at school enjoyable and instill an enthusiasm for learning which they will take with them through their school career.
Our environment is important to support children's learning and development. In Reception, they have engaging role plays linked to their interests or topics, practical activities and provision that covers all seven areas of learning. We value outdoor learning as much as indoor learning and we love messy play!
We start our day with ‘Busy Fingers’ activities. The aim of this is to develop hand and arm muscles ready for writing and to focus on letter formation. We also use this time to practise using scissors and other tools. The activities are interesting and fun and are often linked to a theme such as fireworks or snowflakes.
Every day we have a whole class Phonics session, our chosen scheme is ‘StoryTime phonics’. Feel free to look on the phonics page for more information. Everyone then has an opportunity to develop their skills independently through a range of reading and writing challenges.
We also have a daily Maths lessons, and more importantly, children have opportunity to develop their maths skills practically during continuous provision time.
We take our learning outdoors as often as we can. Pine Class love being outdoors and we put our wellies on to go into the garden in all weathers. Giant construction, gardening, riding bikes are just a few of the activities we have tried so far this year.
In Reception, we are always learning and exploring in our environment. We have focused learning time called Objective Led. This is where we have carefully planning learning objective and outcomes, and we take the learning to the children. For example, if the objective is around money we could end up in the role play or the sand pit, the possibilities are endless! We also have various challenges out in the classroom and outside area for our continuous provision, which we are able to access independently. These vary from writing to maths as well as balancing and going on dinosaur hunts.
For the other areas of our learning in Pine Class we have ‘mini wows’ and a ‘Big Question’ to introduce us to the topic. We are able to input and give suggestions for how and what we want to learn by asking questions based on the mini wows that have happened. This often sparks lots of interest and excitement with the children and is a great way to start the topic. Although we plan topics in advance, we value children’s ideas and will always change these topics based on children’s interests.
