1. Reception Pop In Spring Term 1 2013

2. Topics Term 3  Winter/Jack Frost  Transport  Chinese New Year  Mr Wolf’s Pancakes (Shrove Tuesday) Term 4  Traditional Tales (3Little Pigs, Jack & the Beanstalk)  Easter

3. Reading with your child  Find a quiet place to sit and enjoy the book together.  Let your child hold the book.  Talk about the cover. What does he/she think the book is about?  Who is the author and who is the illustrator? What do they mean?  Encourage your child to turn the pages independently, from the front to the back.  Talk about the pictures on each page. What can they see? What do they think is happening?  Help your child identify the text. Encourage them to point to each word from left to right as you or your child decodes the text.  Look out for any repetitive text in the book.  Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ words using their phonic knowledge (c-a-t, d-o-g).  Help them recognise ‘tricky words’ which you know they have learnt.  Can your child predict what will happen next in the story?  At the end of the story, can they tell you what it was about?

4. Blending  Blending is the process of saying the sounds in the order they are written to be able to read the whole word eg. s-a-t = sat, sh-i-p = ship, c-l-o-ck = clock. It is the skill children need to be able to read.  Please ensure when your child is blending they enunciate the sounds correctly e.g. when blending l-a-d, if you sound it out as ‘luh’ ‘a’ ‘duh’ it actually blends to be ‘ladder’ not ‘lad’.  With Phase 3 phonics it is particularly important for the children to know digraphs. These are graphemes consisting of two letters, but which make one sound, eg. ck, ll, ff, ss, zz, sh, ch, th, ai, ee, oo.

5. Segmenting  Segmenting is the reverse process of blending. It is the skill that children need to be able to write words.  Children need to be able to orally segment words eg. sat = s-a-t, ship = sh-i-p, clock = c-l-o-ck.  Once they can hear the individual sounds in a word, they should be able to write the corresponding graphemes.  Sometimes there are different ways of writing the same phoneme, eg. c, k, ck At this stage it is only important that they represent the sound using a correct grapheme.  When we spell words containing these digraphs, we use the letter names rather than the sounds eg. feet, rain.

6. Writing  Children are encouraged to write at every opportunity both inside and outside, using a range of mark-making materials.  Encourage your child to write simple words and lists, especially in real life situations.  Allow your child to write the sounds that they hear rather than trying to correct spellings. Phonetically plausible attempts are what we are looking for at the moment, correct spelling will come later as we learn alternative graphemes - different ways to spell the phoneme.

7. Mathematics We are focusing this term on:  Counting forwards to 10/20 and backwards from 10/20  Recognising, ordering and writing numerals to 10/20  Counting with one-to-one correspondence  Understanding the concepts of adding and subtracting, including knowing one more or one less than a given number  Matching and sorting activities  Being able to talk about, recognise and recreate patterns  Recognising simple 2-D and 3-D shapes and talk about their properties  Understanding the concepts of more and less, bigger and smaller, heavier and lighter, longer and shorter  Using mathematical ideas to solve problems and recording their work pictorially

8. RE In Terms 3 & 4 our RE topics are Special People to Me and Our Beautiful and Living World  These topics will thread through the other main topics we are learning about and will mainly contribute to our Understanding the World area of learning.  Mrs Rodgers has sent out a letter asking you to put together a box of things which are special to your child. Once you have put it together, please bring it into school. We will return it when your child has had a chance to present it to the other children.

9. Bits and Pieces  Book bags: Please do not put water bottles in your child’s book bag, as we have already had several books damaged by water.  Phonics books: Please continue to practise the new sounds and tricky words. Try to spot these tricky words when you are reading together.  Reading books: Please ensure that reading books are kept in your child’s book bag every day, as we do not have a set day for your child to read. Similarly with the bookmarks, so that we are able to keep a record of each time your child reads.  Please make sure that gloves, hats and scarves are named, as we always have a lot left over at the end of the day!

10. And finally … Please feel free to come and see us if you have any questions or concerns. Don’t forget to check out our Foundation Stage page on our school website. Visit www.st-john.lincs.sch.uk.www.st-john.lincs.sch.uk Ideas always welcome! THANK YOU!