Summer Term 2024 

Water and Around the World and Growing

Welcome to Reception at Hampton Hargate Primary School! Every term you will receive a curriculum statement outlining what your child will be learning about at school.

Our topics this term will be ‘Pirates and Around the World’ and ‘Growing’. This has been written to highlight the activities we are carrying out in school this half term across the seven areas of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Personal Social and Emotional Development

In this area of learning we will be continuing to encourage the children to be as independent as possible – looking after their own belongings including clothes, book bags and coats. We will continue to promote and reward good behaviour using mini merit, gold and silver cards and stickers. This term we will be encouraging the children to talk in a group or to the whole class. They will have opportunities to talk about plans they have made and how they would change things to improve them in the future. We will be encouraging them to manage their own feelings, to keep going when they meet challenges (to develop their resilience and perseverance) and to be considerate of other’s needs. Towards the end of this term we will be encouraging the children to try and talk about their feelings as they come to the end of their first year at school and they get ready to move into Year One.

Communication and Language

In this area of learning we will be encouraging the children to listen to the adults in the Reception unit and to also listen to their friends. We will be giving them opportunities to listen to and join in conversations with others. Planned activities include continuing to introduce the children to new vocabulary linked to our topics and discussing the meaning of these new words. We will be encouraging the children to develop their listening skills, by giving them instructions that contain lots of different parts. At the end of the day we always finish with a story, the children will be listening to stories written by familiar authors. We hope to encourage them to express their view about the events and characters in the stories and we will be asking them questions about why things happened in the stories. During our practice reading sessions the children will be taught how to retell stories using vocabulary linked to the books they have shared. As the children’s first year in school comes to an end they will have the opportunity to reflect on their year and use past, present and future forms when talking about events they have enjoyed.

Literacy Development

The children will be continuing to recap the different letter sounds in their daily phonic sessions. We will be developing their confidence and independence when blending for reading and segmenting for writing. Through our continuous provision (both inside and outside) we will provide lots of exciting opportunities for the children to practise their skills. During our guided writing sessions, the Reception staff will be continuing to teach the children to write for a variety of purposes. They will be writing lists for trips to the south pole and sequencing stories. They will be writing clues so a class mate can guess which animal they are describing. Linked to our topics the children will also be retelling and rewriting favourite and traditional stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk. This term we will be continuing to encourage the children to read at home as much as they can to improve their reading skills. They will continue to read to an adult in the classroom at least once a week and they will be participating in practice reading sessions three times a week. The children will also continue to have regular handwriting sessions to make sure all their letters are formed correctly (both lower and upper-case letters).

Mathematical Development

In this area of learning we will be continuing with our daily maths session when we practice our skills of number recognition, ordering numbers and finding one more and one less than a given number and learning our number bonds to 10. In our focused teaching and learning sessions will build on our knowledge of addition and subtraction. As well as completing sums practically and on a number track we will start to complete them mentally. The children will be given opportunities to use vocabulary relating to time and position. Using a 100 square we will continue to learn how to count in 10’s, 2’s and 5’s. Wherever possible we will be linking mathematics to our topics, during our water topic we will be completing work based around the story ‘one is a snail, ten is a crab’. We will be completing simple problems relating to how many feet there are altogether and explaining the reasons behind our thinking. We will be looking again at 2D shapes and how to compose and decompose using shapes.

Understanding the world

In this area of learning the children will be investigating different materials to find out which float and which sink. Using the results from their experiments the children will then design and make their own ship which will hopefully float! We will be comparing our local environment to a sea-side/Island and we will be discussing the impact we have on our environment and what will happen if we don’t look after the world we live in. We will be looking at simple maps and the children will be making their own maps. During our growing topic opportunities are planned to allow the children to plant lots of different seeds. We will be observing and recording what happens as the seeds grow and talking about the changes that are taking place. A highlight of our growing topic will be learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. We will experience first-hand the changes from egg, to caterpillar to chrysalis and then butterfly.

Expressive Arts and Design

As part of this area of learning we provide daily provision for painting, drawing, collage and junk modelling. During teaching activities, we will be working with the children to make model ships. We will be encouraging the children to design their ship before making it and to explain the reasons behind their choices. We will be giving the children the chance to paint seaside and Island pictures. During our growing topic the children will be studying Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and will be replicating this painting. After listening to Jack and the Beanstalk they will be making a castle for the giant using a range of construction materials. We will be continuing our work in developing our own stories and acting these out as a class using our imaginations and oracy skills.

Physical Development

We will continue to provide a wide range of activities this term both indoors and outdoors – to develop the children’s physical skills. To promote fine motor skills our provision includes cutting, tracing and threading activities. We will be encouraging the children to hold and use equipment correctly such as scissors, pencils and cutlery. We will be continuing with our daily formal letter formation sessions when we will be teaching the children to form their letter correctly. This term we will be encouraging the children to think about the size of their letters and so sit them on the line in their handwriting books. To promote gross motor skills our provision includes the use of bikes and scooters, bats, ball, hoops and large construction blocks in our outdoor area. We will continue with our formal PE lessons, which will include simple ball skills, including throwing and catching. We will be practising and participating in our first sports day too.