Reception Class Newsletter – Summer Term 2
Reception Class Newsletter – second half of the term.
Dear Parents / Carers,
We hope you had an enjoyable half-term. We have another exciting half-term ahead of us. The children worked very hard on their Jack and the Beanstalk topic resulting in some planted out beans and sunflowers and a range of fantastic work. The children were brilliant authors and illustrators – photos of all finished books have been put onto tapestry for you to see / read. Thank you for your comments and feedback on the observations, it really is great to read your responses.
Our topic this half-term is minibeasts! We hope to use the school pond, allotment and wild area even more to investigate and classify minibeasts in different habitats. We will also continue this investigation during our forest school sessions. We will be reading a range of fiction and non-fiction books and hope to watch the full life-cycle of our butterflies. We will be using our bee-bots to learn about position and direction and coding. We will produce art work inspired by the work of Eric Carle and his stories. We will also consider the impact we have on the lives of the creatures around us and consider a number of environmental issues. In phonics we continue to learn to read and write tricky words and decodable words. We are working on writing full and complete sentences with spaces between our words and correct letter formation. In Maths, we will count in 1s,2s, 5s and 10s, solve addition and subtraction problems, learn about the features of 3D shapes and position and direction.
Reading books – many children are making excellent progress in their reading supported by regular reading at home of their school reading book and home texts. We will endeavour to change books as often as possible. The children continue to read weekly in their guided groups with appropriate texts that challenge them and promote discussion. We will be focussing on the features of non-fiction books – contents page, glossary, headings, captions, diagrams and labels. We have a number of adults who come in to class to hear the children read also. Please do continue to record their progress in their yellow book.
Attached is a list of the first 100 words that children should begin to be familiar with to read and then to write throughout Year 1.
We have noticed a number of children, now that they are writing a lot more content, are beginning to misform their letters when writing. We will continue to do regular handwriting practice at school but it wold be worth keeping an eye on this when they are writing at home.
Trip – we will be visiting Shepreth Wildlife Park on Wednesday 13th June. As part of the day we have a fantastic hands-on session booked with the staff and a number of exciting minibeasts! Please make sure you return the permission slip back to us as soon as possible. Thank you.
Sunny weather – it has finally arrived! Please make sure that children bring a named sunhat and water bottle to school daily and come to school wearing suncream. Water only is allowed no juice or squash please. We will always refill bottles with water if they are consumed!
Poetry Journals – we continue to learn a poem each week. Thank you for the wonderful work produced each week. We often share this work with the class to inspire others. If your child is onto their second journal, please do keep the first one at home.
Transition into Year 1 – this is a really important time for the children as we come to the end of the school year. We will ensure that they spend time familiarising with the Year 1 classroom and teacher to aid with a smooth transition. There will be an opportunity to have a session with the new teacher on 17th July and we have planned some joint activities with the current Year 1 class.
Useful dates:
13.6.18 Shepreth Trip
15.6.18 Reception parents invited to assembly 2.45-3.15
6.7.18 Last Forest School session plus family picnic
10.7.18 Tray Day
12.6.18 Sports Day
Thank you all for your continued support. Please do come and see us with any queries or comments.
Best wishes, Alison Course and Wendy Berrett