Welcome to Reception
Special Educational Needs and Inclusion Learning Support Team Mrs Frostick FS Mrs Major and Mrs Allen Y1 Miss Quinn and Mrs Coverdale Y2 Mrs Blake and Miss Arkley Y3/4 Mrs Edwards Mrs Coghlan Y5/6 Mrs Frostick and Mrs Sadowski Mrs Hughes
Emotion and Wellbeing Team Sara ra Harr rris ison on Marga rgaret ret Wilso son Well llbe being ing Co-ord rdinat inator or The herape apeuti utic Couns unsell llor or Soph ophy y Bland and Rachel Mansf nsfie ield ld Jenn nni i Eden Famil mily y Sup uppo port rt Worker rker Emot otion ion and d Commu mmunic nicatio ation n Quie iet Roo oom m Coach ach Co-ord Co rdinat inator or On the playground every day from 8.45am Contact via school phone/ email Call in to school
K ey Information • Please encourage your child to come into school independently. • P.E. day is on Wednesday, please come in P.E. kit. • Water bottles. • Book bags to come to school every day, no more than one key ring! • Home/ school book please sign if someone different is collecting. • Questions to staff- please see staff at drop off and pick up times. Staff can be contacted via Class List but please be respectful of time messages are sent. • End of day- please bear with us whilst we see children out safely.
At Western we use an online learning journal called Tapestry to record photos, observations and comments, in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum, to build up a record of your child’s experiences during their time with us. This system allows us to work with parents and carers to share information and record the children’s play and learning inside and outside the classroom. Tapestry allows us to share some of these observations and moments with you. Please ensure that you have completed the Tapestry permission letter. Spare copies of the letter are in the early years reception entrance. Please ask a member of staff should you require a copy. A Tapestry app can be downloaded to smartphones and i-pads which gives parents easy access to their child’s learning journal and also allows parents to upload their own pictures to contribute to the children’s learning record. If you have forgotten your password or have not used if for a while, please speak to Mrs Magill or Mrs Whitelow for the password to be reset.
Reading Children learn to read at different rates in Early Years. When your child enters school they will be provided with a range of activities to support their development of reading skills. A lot of the work the children undertake is learning through play, although there will be times when children have directed tasks and activities to participate in. All children will have a reading book or a shared book (a story to read and share). We aim to hear children read once a week and their books will be changed accordingly. We will record the children’s reading either by observation, photo or video each week on Tapestry. Parents and carers can also comment on Tapestry about their children’s reading at home. Children will select their own books from the box at their level. Children will progress at their own rate and will be given reading scheme books when they have good phonic skills to scaffold their learning. We would like children to share a wide range of books not just their ‘school’ books and this should include non-fiction, magazines, stories and poems. Children should be encouraged to clock up as many reading miles as they can!
Why is reading important at home? ❑ Sharing books with your child is a means of fostering a love of reading and an enthusiasm for books. ❑ As your child progresses, they need lots of praise and encouragement from home and school. ❑ Children need to know how proud you are of them and that reading is not something just done at school. ❑ It is a time for parent and child to bond and have special one to one time together. ❑ It is a time to consolidate knowledge and skills in a loving, safe environment.
Get ready for reading: ❑ Children recognise particular sounds in the environment. Listen for birds singing, vehicles, animal sounds, water boiling, leaves rustling etc. ❑ Children regularly sing nursery rhymes which are a key part of developing children’s rhyme and rhythm. ❑ Children can borrow library books from school to share. ❑ Model alliterative play with your child e.g. “I’ll have some peppery, pepperoni, pizza, please!” ❑ Make full use of i-pods, i-pads, story CDs, tablets to share stories, rhymes and songs. ❑ Sing songs with claps, pats and stamps such as ‘Happy and You Know It.’ ❑ Add body percussion to rhymes, performing the sound of the beat and then add movement. ❑ Invest in some rhyming stories such as ‘ Mr. Magnolia’ by Quentin Blake, ‘My Friend Bear’ by Jez Alborough or ‘This is the Bear’ by Sarah Hayes and Helen Craig to name but a few. ❑ Encourage children to use their voices to make loud and soft noises, high and low sounds, scary voices, singing voices and add voices of characters when you are reading to them.
Why Teach ach Phonics nics? The abili ility ty t to read ad has truly become a necessity to survive and thrive in today’s society ety . The best st way to teach ach children dren to read ad is to ensure ure that t a high quality, ty, fun daily y phonics nics programm gramme e is delivered vered to children. dren. Phonics cs is a metho hod d for teachi ching read ading ng and writin ting by develo veloping ng learners' rners' phonemi nemic c awareness areness — the the ability ty to hear, r, identi ntify, fy, and d manipul ulate ate phonemes nemes — in n order er to teach ch the corres espondence pondence between tween these ese sound nds and the spel elling ng patterns tterns (graph aphemes emes ) that represent them. Also……… • It is proven that high quality daily phonic teaching secures the skill of word recognition. • Once mastered, most children are able to read fluently and automatically. • Once children are fluent readers, they are able to concentrate on the meaning of the texts that they read. • Children can then move from learning to read to reading for pleasure and purpose. • Phonics also teaches skills for spelling and therefore improves standards in a child’s writing, as well as improving general academic confidence.
What do some of the terms mean? Phoneme eme – The sm smal allest est unit of sound in a word . Grap apheme heme – Grap aphica hical l represen presentatio tation n of a sound/ phoneme – what the sound looks like when written. For some phonemes, this could be more than one letter e.g. t, ai, igh. Digraph raph – a phoneme represented with 2 letters. Trigraph graph – a phoneme represented by 3 letters.
What do we use at our school? At Western, we follow our own scheme which is linked to the Lette tters rs and Sounds ds programme. Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills which consists of six phases. We run our scheme alongside Jolly lly Phonic ics. Jolly Phonics is very visual and practical and, in our opinion, works well within Phases 2 to 5 of Letters and Sounds.
Blending and Segmenting It is important that children know and understand how to blend and segment in order to read and spell words correctly. Blendin nding g to read ad - when phonemes (units of sound) are merged together to pronounce a word. To read an unfamiliar word, a child must link a phoneme to each letter or letter group in a word and then merge them together to say the word = Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence (GPC) e.g. sh sh – o o – p / j – ee ee – p Segmenti menting g to spel ell – When individual sounds are heard in a word. To spell a word, a child must segment a word into the individual phonemes and select the relevant grapheme to represent each of these phonemes . For example a child may write: ‘The cat was blak. It had d a wiet tayl and d a pinc noas .’
What is a CVC word? VC VC on on ea eat of off phase 2 CVC CV dog og boa oat ch chick ck phase 2 & & 3 3 CC CCVC C trip train in brou ought ght phase 4 & & 5 5 CV CVCC CC ten ent t paint nt yard rds phase se 4 & 5 5
Phase 2 Phase 2 starts at the beginning of the Reception Year although some children will have been introduced to the first 6 sounds (satpin) in their nursery / pre-school setting. Phase 2 introduces 19 grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs). As soon as children have a learnt a small number of grapheme/ phoneme correspondences, blending and segmenting can begin. Set Phoneme eme Tricky cky words rds Set 1 s a t p Set 2 i n m d Set 3 g o c k I to the Set 4 ck e u r no go Set 5 h b f ff l ll ss into
Phase 3 Phase 3 introduces the remaining 7 letters of the alphabet / phonemes. Graphemes (digraphs) such as ch, oo, th represent the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Therefore, there are 25 phonemes within Phase 3. Once this phase is complete, children will have squired the ‘code’ in order to blend sounds together for reading i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language. Children will also have many opportunities to learn letter names, spell tricky words, read high frequency words and will know approximately 42 phonemes in total!
Sound Buttons can chop church
Phoneme Frames
Jolly Phonics
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