Meet our Classes
19th September, 2011
Dear Parents,
Autumn Term Curriculum Letter for Maple Class
First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome both those of you whose children were in Acorns last year and those who have joined as from other Nurseries or settings. I hope you enjoyed your summer break, the children have certainly enjoyed sharing their adventures with Geoffrey the Giraffe!
The purpose of this, the curriculum letter, is to give you information regarding your child’s routines and the topics they will be studying. We hope you find it useful but please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Maple class routines:
- In Maple class, we ask the children to read as often as possible. This will include their reading books but may also include reading other books from the library, cards, signs, posters, cereal packets and so on. Their reading books will be changed in school three times per week, providing they have read and a comment, however small, is left in their reading record by an adult.
- If you would like to keep a reading book for a little longer, please simply note in your child’s reading record what page they have read to and that you would like to keep it for a little while longer. This helps us to keep our records up to date.
- PE kit needs to stay in school every day. For health and safety reasons, children will not be allowed to participate in sports activities if they have incorrect footwear. If you would like to take PE kit home to wash, you may of course do so but please return them as soon as possible.
- Please note that no earrings should be worn on PE days (Monday) for health and safety reasons.
- Please ensure your child’s uniform and PE kit, lunch box and water bottle are clearly labelled with their full name. This includes coats and shoes – children often have identical pairs and it can be very difficult to tell them apart!
- For Health & Safety reasons, children should not wear jewellery to school and girls who have hair that is longer than chin length must have their hair tied back with a blue or black band.
- Art aprons are provided and so children are not required to bring their own.
- Please send your child into school with a bottle of water that they may drink from throughout the day. Please do not fill these bottles with fruit juice or squash.
- Children’s reading will be assessed on an ongoing basis throughout the whole year. Every child will read to either myself or Miss Stocker on a weekly basis.
- Any money that is sent into school must be in an envelope with your child’s full name, class, amount of money enclosed and what it is for.
- If your child is absent from school, a note is required, explaining the absence as soon as possible.
- If you ever have any questions or need to pass on a message to me, please either catch me on the school gate or write a note in your child’s contact book. I am on the gate in the morning and after school, however, it is easier for me to answer your questions fully at the end of the school day.
As you may be aware, the curriculum for Reception children is derived from the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) and, as such, the curriculum is structured slightly differently to Key Stages 1 and 2. There are six primary areas to the foundation stage curriculum:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication, Language and Literacy
- Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
- Knowledge and Understanding of the World
- Creative Development
- Physical Development
These areas of learning have an equal weighting in terms of delivery time and assessment and all are delivered through topic style teaching.
Our topics for this, the autumn term are ‘My Body’ and ‘Celebrations’. We will be focusing on ‘My Body’ in this, the first half term and moving on to look at ‘Celebrations’ towards the second half.
During the course of our ‘My Body’ topic, we will be looking at different stories in which the characters use their senses. For example, ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ by Julia Donaldson will help us to think about hearing and we will be going on sound walks through the school, recording what we can hear. The ladybird’s spots also allow us to think carefully about counting and number recognition.
Our ‘Celebrations’ topic will begin enable us to look at several different celebrations. For example, Divali, bonfire night, Chinese New Year and Christmas. We will be exploring each of these celebrations in various ways including a making Divas for Divali, fireworks for bonfire night, dancing and making Chinese dragons and lanterns for Chinese New Year and practicing our Nativity along with many other activities to celebrate Christmas.
School Trips:
This term the children will not be going out of school for any trips but a theatre company will be coming into school to celebrate Black History Month and a there will be a fun packed Pantomime over the Christmas season.
While I hope this letter has given you all the information you need, please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information. We look forward to getting to know you all over the coming academic year.
Yours sincerely,
Miss. P. Withers Miss. L. Stocker
Click here for a print version of this letter (PDF) |
