Reception
Welcome to Reception! Our teachers are Mrs Miss Hemmings, Mrs Wright and Mr Evans. We are supported by an amazing team that includes: Mrs Skears, Miss Pawlik, Mrs Graham, Miss Pinnock and Mrs Brown-John to name just a few!
In Reception, we strive to nurture and encourage our children to become happy, confident, competent and lifelong learners. Our aim is for the children to develop independence and to continue to develop across all 7 areas of learning, with every child at the very centre of this. With this in mind, we have adopted hygge across the Foundation Stage – having more neutral, calm and inviting spaces that allow our children to feel secure and in a home from home, with lower lighting and lots of opportunities to self-select alongside adult-initiated enhancements to take their learning forwards.
The transition into Reception is really important. We offer many opportunities to build relationships with our families so that parents can meet staff and feel as secure as possible about making the step into full-time school, and we offer stay and play sessions for prospective Reception children too, in terms 5 and 6.
We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum, within which there are 7 areas of learning. These are split into prime areas and specific areas. They are all important and also interconnected. These are:
Prime Areas:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Specific Areas:
- Literacy
- Maths
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Art and Design
At Bure Park, we use Development Matters as supporting guidance for all 7 areas of learning, and we access these through a mixture of adult-led carpet time sessions, continuous provision, child-initiated and adult-initiated opportunities and focus activities. Learning through play has a central role in our curriculum – we call this 'playing to learn'. We love exploring our wealth of outdoor space as well as our indoor spaces for this. We have a strong emphasis on the Characteristics of Effective Learning - how the children learn and develop skills through playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically.
Communication and Language development is key, and we support this with WellComm – a wonderful tool for identifying and targeting support to ensure progress, as communication and language are the key to so many wonderful things! In reception, as we do across the whole school, we follow the mastery approach for maths, and have a daily maths carpet time. The mastery approach allows for opportunities to learn and revisit and thus develop a deeper understanding of number and numerical patterns. Our children develop their literacy skills with the support of daily Read, Write Inc sessions, and we use this alongside carefully planned work around meaningful topics and high-quality books that allow us to explore wonderful language and expand our love of fiction and non-fiction texts.
In Reception, we use 'Tapestry' to communicate with parents about all the amazing learning that happens at school. We also ask our families to share what the children have been doing at home too, so that we can talk to them about their experiences. This helps us to develop great bonds with all the little people in our Reception family.
Parents can access Tapestry via https://tapestryjournal.com/ by using their login details.
We are really proud to be able to offer blocks of Forest School sessions for our Reception children here at Bure Park. Our sessions are run on site in our Forest School area and led by Mr Evans, who is our Forest School lead. The children have a wonderful opportunity to participate in activities within a natural setting which provides a safe environment for them to learn and explore. Activities take place throughout the year and in general in all weathers.
As we approach the end of the academic year, supporting our children's transition into Year 1 is really important to us. We do this in a number of ways, such as having play times on the main side, sharing stories with future Year 1 teachers and experiencing transition day, in line with the rest of the school. Using ongoing assessments and our knowledge of each child, we also report to the government with regard to the Early Learning Goals and how confident each child is with these.
Links for Remote Learning:
50 things to do before you turn 5
https://oxfordshire.50thingstodo.org/app/os#!/welcome
Oak Academy
https://www.thenational.academy/
Cosmic Kids
