Summer Term 2023
Welcome to Barn Owls, our Reception class. Our children will have the time and space to explore their own interests and fascinations. Adults will join children as co-players, allowing them to lead the direction of their play, but finding opportunities to sprinkle learning over the top by joining in with thoughtful modelling, suggesting, explaining and questioning.
This term we are looking at Amazing Animals - firstly finding out about our pets, then jungle animals as we look at 'The Tiger who came to Tea' then animals that live in a zoo - and can't wait for our trip to Paignton Zoo. Finally we will look at farm animals and then minibeasts - in time for National Bee Day at the end of May!
When the children arrive at 8.55am, they self register on our 5 frames with a photo of themselves and then get straight on with a Funky Finger activity - dough disco, practising using scissors, a big draw, threading, using tweezers etc etc. Something different every day! Once everyone has arrived, we sit in Carpet Kingdom where we follow Letters and Sounds for our phonics programme and teach the phonemes/graphemes to the children through this programme. In the Autumn Term we teach Phase 2, Spring Term Phase 3 and Summer Term Phase 4. The children can take home a reading book every day which is matched to the phonics that is being taught. You may change these from the Reading Shed outside Year 2 classroom. Alongside the reading book the children have 'net words' to learn the 100 most common and tricky words. They take a magnetic game home to practice spelling some of these words too which are changed weekly.
Maths is taught practically wherever possible and this year we are privileged to be part of the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) Mastering Number Programme.
Each week we enjoy 'play projects', after being inspired by Greg Bottrill author of 'Can I Go and Play Now' and 'School and the Magic of Children'. We have now started Drawing Club - which is great fun and we get to learn some amazing words and discover stories, animations and traditional tales.
Our classroom has a cosy club, message centre, creation station, land of possibilities, tinker table and carpet kingdom. We encourage the children to investigate, explore & discover and they enjoy the freedom to move around the classroom and outside in our lovely outdoor area that we share with the pre-school. We are very much child led and follow the children's interests as much as possible.
The children visit Adventure Island every Monday and Friday afternoon and love meeting all the characters that live there, Riddle Diddle, The Min Pins, Bog Babies, Smeech and the naughty Goblins who get up to mischief. There are rope swings, shelters, a pond and lots of MUD! We also have a raised bed to plant some vegetables in and hopefully will see the fruits of our labour in the Summer Term!
'Children are capable. Every day they show us a magic door. We just need the faith to step through it.'
Mary Raffell - Class teacher
