Reception

Reception Class

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to Reception at Sandringham and West Newton.  Your child’s well-being is at the heart of what we do.  It is important to us that they are settled and happy when coming to school, and this is our main priority throughout the first half term.  We endeavour to encompass the school rules of ‘Ready, Respectful, Safe’ during this time, so that school can be enjoyed by all.  The children love playing and exploring in our stimulating continuous provision and are respectful of this, helping to tidy and maintain the areas.  Our classroom environment supports and encourages independence.  Being willing to give things a go is encouraged, along with a growth mindset and developing resilience.

Story times and nursery rhymes are valued within our setting.  We prioritise communication and language and developing vocabulary.  We aim to provide a successful balance between accessing the continuous provision and more formal learning inputs.  This is designed to impart specific knowledge and understanding, enabling the children to learn new skills which they can transfer into their own learning and play.  Our focused learning times are gradually progressed over the course of the timetable and include phonics, maths, reading and topic-based inputs.  We have an open communication with parents through the online learning journal tapestry.  This is used to document learning throughout the year along with some recordings in books.

The reception class starts together full time in September of the year in which they are five.
The Little wandle phonics scheme is used to support reading and writing. Children build up a phonics library of sounds in their book bag and parents can support the classroom work by helping the child finish the colouring, learn the action that accompanies the sound and also the correct letter formation in writing.
The children learn to read using the Little Wandle books.  The books are used during supported reading sessions during the school day and are sent home each day for the children to read with parents.
Most of the learning is supported through guided and child initiated play.

Children are celebrated within our class following the PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies) child of the week.  This also supports developing confidence and children’s emotional intelligence.  We have strong links with the local Church, with Father Paul regularly visiting for our collective worship.  We also participate in harvest, Christmas and Easter services, as well as the Nativity.

 

We also have just received permission to recommence our Nursery provision, which used to work in conjunction with the  Sandringham and West Newton preschool. The preschool in the village has now closed, so we will shortly be offering places for  children for the term in which they are 4. This can be for mornings/ afternoons or the whole day. We take children in,  in the first week back after each half term. we have a maximum of 8 places. For information please call the school office.

 

Please find below our welcome back letter, planning and timetable for Spring 1 2024

 

Reception Timetable Spring 1

Reception Topic Map Spring 1 Amazing Animals

Reception Welcome Letter Spring 1

Please find below welcome back letter and details for our new Reception class for second half of the Autumn term :-

Reception Topic Map Autumn 2

Reception Timetable Autumn 2

Reception Welcome Letter Autumn 2

 

 

Please find below welcome back letter and details for our new Reception class.

Reception Welcome Letter Autumn 1

Reception Topic Map Autumn 1

Reception Timetable Autumn 1 (1)

 

Please find below information for the Summer term 2023

 

Reception Summer 2 – Inspirational People and Community

Reception Timetable Summer 2

Reception Welcome Letter Summer 2

 

Reception Timetable Summer 1

Reception Summer 1 – Fantastic Fairy Tales

Reception Welcome Letter Summer 1

Please find below newsletter, timetable and planning overview for the second half of the Spring term 2023

 

 

Reception Spring 2 Spring has Sprung!

Reception Timetable Spring 2

Reception Welcome Letter Spring 2

Planning for the new Spring term 2023 can be found below

 

Reception Spring 1 Amazing Animals

Reception Timetable Spring 1

Reception Welcome Letter Spring 1

Planning for the second half of the Autumn term 2022 can be found here :-

 

Reception Autumn 2 Celebrations

Reception Welcome Letter Autumn 2

Reception Timetable Autumn 2

 

Reception Autumn 1 All About Me (1)

Reception Autumn 1 Reception Timetable (1)

Reception Timetable Autumn 1

Check out our latest gallery from Reception learning.

Literacy lessons link

Posted on March 29th, 2020


Link to week 1 of phonics lessons

Posted on March 26th, 2020


Home Learning Reception

Posted on March 23rd, 2020


Good morning everybody,

I hope you are all well. Today, I will be filming the weeks worth of youtube videos for phonics and maths this morning. I have planned it to be delivered as a video, but,as it’s my first one, it may need a little editing before I can upload it and send you the link. I’m hoping that it will be later today. I put whiteboards and pens into the bags of any children that were still in school on Thursday, but, if your child was not present that day, then paper and a pen/pencil will work fine. The maths is looking at doubling in the first episode (we looked at this two weeks ago so it’s a bit of a refresher) and then goes onto halving, which is a new concept for us. For this I use a paper plate divided in half by a black line, but, once again, a piece of paper divided in half will be fine. It will be a good idea to have the whiteboards/paper handy for both phonics and maths lessons, and also if an adult or older sibling remains present for the tutorial as it is a good idea to pause the video at times to allow them time to read a presented sentence, or write a word, before I carry on with the lesson. In phonics we have just completed phase 3. This covers all the new sounds that the children are taught in Reception, so this is a good place to be in this unusual circumstances that we all find ourselves in. The focus now is to use all the phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (written verson of the sounds) and put them into our writing and reading. We will also focus on the common exception words taught at phase 2 and 3. These are those words that pop up regularly in sentences but do no always conform with the phonics sounds that are taught e.g. you (the y is helping us but the ou is making an irregular oo sound). We will take the phonemes and common exception words and build sentences that I will ask your child to read or write in the tutorials. We will also progress onto reading and writing two syllable words. I advise them tackling the first syllable before moving onto the second when reading or writing. Punctuation will cover full stops, question marks,capital letters and finger spaces between words. The odd exclamation mark may appear.

I will do counting together on the video clips but this doesn’t work brilliantly unless I am counting along too, so it would be good if you can use the 100 squares to count together everyday. The children are used to counting regularly to 100 in ones, in tens and in fives, so it would be excellent practice to keep this going on a daily basis. We haven’t started counting in twos yet, so this is something that you could introduce (always using the 100 square for help). We also regularly work on one/two more than a given number and one/two less than a given number (if they struggle with this, then do use the 100 square for help). Telling the time to the hour, coin recognition and discussing the properties of 2D/3D shapes will also be excellent daily activities.We also sing the days of the week song to the tune of the Adams Family (There’s Monday and there’s Tuesday, there’s Wednesday and there’s Thursday, there’s Friday and there’s Saturday and then there’s Sunday…days of the week CLAP CLAP…days of the week…CLAP CLAP)

Also, the website favoured by every teacher, Twinkl (note no e on the end) is offering one months free subscriptions for all parents at the moment. I cannot promote this enough to you. It is where the resources I have currently sent home all came from. It has resources for just about anything. Once logged in, I would suggest starting any search with EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) and then what you are searching for e.g. EYFS subtraction activities, EYFS phase 3 sentences. Also,if you are reading a certain picture book with your child, then search for resources for those books on Twinkl too.

I added extra reading books to the book bags as well,so have a good read of those too.

If your child was absent during the last week, then I have asked Mrs Birrell to send out the work activities in the post to you.

Keep your eye out for my next email (hopefully today) as it will contain the link to the first youtube tutorials.

I’m missing you all already. We have the best little group in our class, so please do take care and we will hopefully all be back together as soon as possible.

Jackie Patnell

Celebrating Chinese New Year at Silk Road Restaurant

Posted on February 21st, 2020


We enjoyed another excellent trip to the Chinese restaurant last week. In keeping with our celebrations for Chinese New Year, the whole school hopped on the coaches and headed out to the Silk Road Restaurant in Heacham. The staff gave us a lovely warm welcome and fed us well with chow mein, sweet and sour chicken balls, rice and spring rolls. We all had a chance to win prizes by answering questions about the new year celebrations, followed by dragon dancing around the restaurant. Our Reception class had a table to themselves and made me proud with their exceptional behaviour throughout. They tried all of their food, even the things they had never tried before. Before we left, everybody was given traditional Chinese New Year gifts of money pockets, sweets and fortune cookies. What an excellent way to end our Spring half-term.

Making our Characters into Puppets

Posted on February 21st, 2020


We invited our parents into our classroom today, to help us make our characters for our stories, into puppets. They all looked absolutely amazing, which is down to all the hard work from both parents and children. Thank you for coming everyone! We hope to do something similar this coming half-term, with our new topic-Circus.

Forest School

Posted on February 21st, 2020


Forest School was excellent this week. The children had to use so many skills: safety with sticks, secateurs, climbing trees and toasting marshmallows by the fire, problem solving with their golf ball run,working together on the swings and mud kitchen, and perseverance and patience with turn taking. What a fabulous morning!

Outdoor Learning at Houghton Hall

Posted on February 21st, 2020


It was a chilly day for our first trip to Houghton Hall. Following the snow from the day before, we set off in rather cold and windy conditions. However, we had a great day, playing games in the woods, inspecting the sculptures and exploring the walled garden. We snuggled in the barn to eat our lunch, and following this, made a snowman with the last of the snow. We hope to return in April to see how the estate has changed as the weather gets warmer.

Posting our letters to Santa

Posted on February 21st, 2020


After writing our own letters to Santa, we set off to the village post box to post them in time for Christmas.

Contact Details

Headteacher: Jane Gardener

Secretary: Trish Birrell

Sandringham and West Newton Primary School
School Road, West Newton, Norfolk, PE31 6AXUnited Kingdom01485 540506

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