Spring Term 2023 

People who help us, Superheroes and Animal Magic

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 People who help us, Superheroes and Animal Magic. 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 be sharing the rules of the classroom and the school and we will be encouraging and rewarding, good behaviour using mini merits, house points and stickers. This term we will really be focusing on the children’s speech and their conversations. We will be working with the children and modelling how to initiate conversations with others. We would like them to feel confident to talk to others about their feelings and to show concern when others are upset. As the children start their formal PE lessons we will also be encouraging the children to get dressed and undressed independently. Please support your child at home with this as much as possible, encouraging them to get dressed themselves before school.

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 talking about their Christmas holiday and the presents they received. During our ‘people who help us’ topic we will discussing what questions are and we will be encouraging the children to use ‘how’ and ‘why’ words when asking their peers and visitors questions. At the end of the day we always finish with a story, the children will be listening to stories written by a familiar author, we will encourage discussion with the children by asking them to relate what they have heard to their own experiences. During our practice reading sessions, the children will be taught how to retell stories using vocabulary linked to the books they have shared. During outdoor play the children will have the opportunity to discuss what they have learnt about this week’s topic by stopping and talking to an adult at the ‘talking point’. We will continue to share our new words/vocabulary for the week on Tapestry.

Literacy Development

The children will be continuing to learn the different letter sounds in their daily phonic sessions. We will be continuing with our teaching of blending skills for reading and segmenting skills for writing and we will be doing lots of modelling for the children so they can begin to read and write simple words independently. 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, we will be teaching the children to write for a variety of purposes. They will be writing about clues they have found to try and work out who stole the Reception bikes. They will be writing questions they want to ask the firefighters when they visit us and they will be writing about Chinese New Year. During our animal magic topic the children will be retelling and rewriting favourite and traditional stories. This term we will be encouraging the children to read at home as much as they can to build on their early 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 in school two to three times a week. Practice reading sessions are where a group of children share the same book with an adult, reading the words and discussing the story. To support you with this we will be holding a reading meeting this term.

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, finding one more and one less than a given number and learning to recognise odd and even numbers. We will be continuing to use the whole-part-part model to learn number facts to 5 then 10. Our focused teaching and learning sessions will include addition, subtraction, sharing and estimation. Using a 100 square we will begin to learn how to count in 10’s and 2’s. Wherever possible we will be linking mathematics to our topics, we will be completing Superhero number problems for example finding pairs of numbers that make 10.

Understanding the world

 

In this area of learning we will be observing growth and changes during our ‘Animal Magic’ topic. We will hopefully see our bulbs that were planted in Autumn, flower and we will record our observations through drawings. We will be building on our previous learning from last term finding out about different festivals and celebrations, this term we will be learning about Chinese New Year and Easter. We will be learning about different jobs and roles in our community such as the police, ambulance service and fire fighters. We will be using simple computer programmes to support our learning in all the areas of the EYFS.  We will be using iPads and cameras to record some of our experiences this term for example we will record our visits from the police and firefighters and we will be recording the chicks hatching and growing.                                                                                   

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 fire engines and police equipment for the class bears. When learning about chicks we will be using a wide range of materials to make chicks e.g. pastel drawings, collages, and junk model chicks.  We will continue to explore what happens when colours are mixed together. We provide instruments for the children inside and outside and we will introduce them to songs and music related to our topics so they can make up their own dances and music e.g. Chinese New Year dragon dances.

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 and pencils. We will also be teaching the children to use knives and forks when cutting and eating so please can we ask that you support your child at home with these skills. We will be continuing with our daily formal letter formation sessions when we will be teaching the children to form their letters correctly. 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 starting our formal PE lessons, which will include dance and gymnastic lessons.