Cressing Primary School

Welcome to all the children and families who have started with us in Reception.  The children have had a fantastic first few days and we are enjoying getting to know them.  Our first topic is “Animal Adventure” – which will evolve and adapt to the children’s interests.  Some of our core texts will be “Goldilocks and the three bears”, “The Little Red Hen”, “Handa’s Surprise” and “Owl Babies”.

Homework wallets – Please keep Reading books, Reading records, Name cards, number formation line, flashcards in here and bring them to school daily: 

In your child’s plastic wallet, you will find their Reading books (currently wordless) and a Reading Record for you to sign each time that you read with them. A note with more information is stuck in the front cover of the Reading Record. Please try to read/look at the books regularly with your child—aim for 5 to 10 minutes five times per week. We will be introducing phonic pots and phonetically decodable books as we start to introduce the children to sounds in a few weeks.

We have also enclosed a name card and dry wipe pen for your child to practice writing their name at home (with correct letter formation).  Please encourage them to trace over the letters, starting on the dots, following the arrows, and working left to right. Their name should have a capital letter at the start and then the rest should be written in lowercase.  As a next step, they could copy and then attempt to write their name without sight of the card on paper or a whiteboard. For those children who can already write their names, this is still great practice for correct letter formation and to help control size.

On the letter formation sheet:

• Can they try and spot the letters found in their name (although there aren’t any capital letters on there for their first letter).
• As we start to introduce sounds to the children in the next few weeks you can play “Quick Write” – you say a sound e.g. “s” or “a” and your child finds that sound on their sheet and traces it.

We will start letter formation and handwriting practice later this half-term. Meanwhile we will be strengthening our fine motor muscles through fun activities like threading, Dough-disco, using tweezers.

There is also a number formation line enclosed to practice tracing and number formation and some number flashcards.  Some ideas for flashcard games:

• Choose a number, then perform that many actions e.g. pick 3 – 3 x hops, pick 5 -five x claps.
• Give the child a number and they have to count out / find that many objects e.g. lego bricks, buttons, or teddies to match.
• Count objects (lined up and then irregular arrangements), then find the number to match.
• Order the flashcards e.g. 1-5 to begin with.  Hide one or two from the number line.  Can the children work out which numeral is missing is missing?
• Count up pointing at each number in turn.
• Count back down, pointing at each number in turn.
• Find the number that is one more than number e.g. one more than 4?
• Find the number that is one less than number e.g. one less than 5?

Reception Baseline Assessment:

Over the next few weeks we will be undertaking the statutory government "Reception Baseline Assessment".This will be done over two or more short sessions, as appropriate to suit the children's attention span and stamina.The activities are based around age-appropriate Maths skills and Communication, language, and early literacy skills. If you would like to read more about this please copy and paste the link below to the government information for parents:

A very short set of statements will be made available to us, following the assessment, and should be ready to download in October.These provide "a narrative description of how your child performed in the assessment" to quote the government leaflet for parents. These will be made available to you (but as a pre-warning, they are not particularly informative). We will also be carrying out our own more in-depth baseline assessment during the first few weeks, by spending time with the children and observing their play and interactions.

PE: 

This will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays and children should come to school wearing their PE clothes on these days.  Tuesday’s PE sessions will be taught by a specialist PE coach alongside the class teacher.

Paper Bags of treasures:

Please could the children bring their bag in by Monday 9^th September if they haven’t done so already. We will be sharing these over the week and each child will have the opportunity to talk about their special treasures or memories in their bag.

Teddy Bears’ Breakfast – Friday 13^th September:

The children will be having a Teddy Bears’ Breakfast on the morning of 13^th. They are welcome to bring a teddy / soft toy animal to join them for the day.  We will make an invitation for their teddy / soft toy animal next week so look out for these in their book bags. We will be making some breakfast food e.g. porridge, cereal and toast, therefore the children won’t need to bring a snack from home that morning if you think they will eat the above.  We will check allergies e.t.c. with parents beforehand where this applies.

Wellbeing Theme Week – “Playing my part”:  23rd September:

Class R will be learning about managing our feelings and self-regulation via the children’s book “The Colour Monster” by Anna Llenas.  We often have a yoga session with a specialist teacher.  We will learn about how we can play our part in looking after others' happiness, health, and mental wellbeing e.t.c.  by showing kindness to others, caring for our community. We will end the week with “Fitness Friday” and our Harvest Festival Assembly on Friday 27^th September (for pupils only). The children will be asked to bring in donations for our local foodbank (please see the whole school newsletter for details).  Our “Cressing C” value this half term is “caring” which also links in well.

“Our Families” Activity – Please send photos by Monday 16th September.

As part of our topic the children will be talking about who is in their family, painting their “Family Tree” and adding photos of people (and pets!) who are important to them.  Many of you have already sent in some family photos – thank you.

If you haven’t yet done so, it would be fantastic if you could send in a few photographs of immediate family members e.g. parents or carers, siblings and grandparents.  Group photos or individual photos are fine.  These may be cut up and will be stuck onto their work and therefore won’t be returnable. This activity will become part of a floor book that the children love to look through.  4 or 5 photos maximum, please. Passport photo size would be perfect if you are sending several individual photos or a normal snapshot size is great for group photos.  These can be printed out on a sheet of normal A4 paper – it doesn’t need to be fancy photographic paper. If it is easier for you and you don’t have access to a printer, please email a few photos into us – hdownes@cressing.essex.sch.uk or upload them onto your child’s Tapestry account.  If you can’t do this for any reason, please don’t worry, the children will have the opportunity to draw some of their family members. 

Phonics and early reading meeting – Tuesday 24th September at 2.45pm

This will be the third full year of using Supersonic Phonic Friends our SSP (systematic synthetic phonics) teaching programme. Alongside starting this scheme, we purchased a set of “Big Cat” Collins fully decodable books to support the children’s progress.

There will be a quick information meeting for parents and carers on Tuesday 24^th September at 2.45pm regarding how we teach phonics, reading, and writing in Reception and how you can support this at home. “Phonic Pots” will be given out in book bags later in the term as we introduce our first set of sounds. Practicing these words at home each week is a great support in getting the children to recognise the sounds and blend confidently as soon as possible.  If any families are not in a position to attend the meeting and would like to know more about this, please let me know.  I can then arrange to catch you before or after school on another day. 

“Come and Play” Session – Tuesday 15^th October at 2.15pm:

We would love parents to come and join the children to play and explore the classroom. This will finish at normal home time at 3.20 pm. Later in the year, we will have some “Stay for phonics” sessions so you can join us to see how we teach phonics in Reception.

Tapestry:

The Tapestry links will be sent out via email once your child has started school. Although we will try to add some individual posts to celebrate “wow” moments, this platform is more commonly used to inform you about our recent learning and activities via group posts.

Curriculum enhancements and visits:

We hope to organise a “Forest School” Session or animal encounter before half term to support our learning. We expect this to cost approximately £8.00 per child (voluntary contribution). More information will follow if we can arrange this experience.

We hope to arrange another special session in the Spring Term and have booked “Little City” role-play for the past two years which has been very successful.

We also have a Class Trip, usually towards the end of the summer term.  We have visited several different places over the years, but to give you an idea of the cost, recently the trips have been about £16-£18 per child – mainly because transport costs have risen so much.

Any questions please just ask. Thank you for your support.

The Reception Team