Monksmead School

Reception

Further information for new families who are joining our Early Years classes can be found here.

Teacher: Mrs Cornwell

Support Staff:  Mrs Smith  & Ms Sweeney

News from Reception

Summer 2025

Dear Parents,

Welcome to the summer term! Hopefully this will bring us plenty of lovely weather and we will be making the most of our outdoor space. These are some of the things that will be going on in our garden.

We have a garden peep den with coloured windows for chilling, chatting, reading and exploring.  We have some bug houses to develop interest in wildlife and observational and identification skills. We have two areas that are covered in gravel /pebbles that lead directly from the shelter so even on wet muddy days the children can be outside without sliding around or getting muddy. One area is a mud kitchen and the other area has maths and writing resources as well ramps, blocks and slopes for small scale construction. There is also a performance area with logs for the audience to sit and watch the shows. We have some large scaffolding boards, ladders, poles, hurdles and crates for large scale construction and for building obstacle courses.

Can you please help ?

Our garden is always a work in progress! Like any garden it needs mainitaining and  gravel and woodchip get displaced by the weather and the children’s play. If you ever happen to have spare gravel,woodchip, flowering plants  or compost, that you could donate, then these  would be very gratefully received and put to good use.

If you have access to traffic cones , plastic barriers or signs such as those used in roadworks, clean guttering or piping these would all be very useful in the further development of our garden and playground.

If anyone has good condition pallets and/or the skills and time to convert these into some structures please do come and have a chat with me!

What will we be learning in Reception ?

This first half term we will be reading ‘Coming to England’ and ‘My Two Grannies’ which are both books by Floella Benjamin. These provide opportunities to compare past and present,  as well as comparisons between two countries. These provide the stepping stones for history and geography. We will then move to   a topic called, “This is our world’. Our first core book will be  ‘Clean Up’ which focuses on looking after the environment: reducing waste, not littering and recycling. Our creative work and understanding of the world will involve modelling with reclaimed materials and making observations about the world around us, noting things that enhance the environment and things, such as litter, that spoil it.

In light of this new topic, we will be having a huge drive on respecting our own immediate environment and resources. A big part of this will be tidying up after ourselves as we go and at tidy time. We would like to work with you on this and so will speak to you if your child has been making an especially positive contribution in this area and conversely if they haven’t been doing their share of tidying or not respecting resources. We thank you for your support with this. Please encourage the children to get involved with recycling at home and talk to them about what you are doing as a family.

After half term we will be continuing to think about our world but on a smaller, more personal level where we focus on “Our Garden”. We will be looking at plants and mini beasts and learning about life cycles. This is a lovely summer topic.

Literacy/Topic

Our literacy lessons will initially be centered around the texts by Floella Benjamin and then,  ‘Clean Up’, a book  about a young girl who tackles pollution of the ocean. The story is set on a Caribbean Island so the children have already been able to draw some comparisons with our recent stories about Trinidad. The children will be writing lists and making posters to persuade people not to drop litter and to help clear the beaches.

Following on from this, we will be looking at some fictional takes on recycling where a cardboard box and a plastic bottle get a new lease of life! These stories will then be used as a stimulus for some creative writing in groups where the children produce their own books.

We are having a real focus on writing so will be doing focused adult led writing sessions in small groups, on a very regular basis, as well in addition to the tasks mentioned above that are based on our core texts. In these writing sessions we work with the children on their particular areas for development. Please look out for feedback on Tapestry and areas to develop and support at home.

Please continue to read regularly with your child and update us with brief comments in their reading diary.

Phonics

We will be continuing to do our daily ELS phonics sessions and will soon be finishing Phase 3. Reading at home is essential to help the children apply what they have been learning at school. Just a reminder that the children usually bring home one phonics reader and a shared reading book which has a sticker saying ‘shared reader’. It is really beneficial to read both books several times however the phonics reader (the one WITHOUT the sticker) is the book that mirrors the phonics taught in class and so should be a priority. The shared reader is roughly aligned but may have unfamiliar phonemes (sounds) or harder to read and spell words, which is why it is suggested that these are shared readers where children may need more support or for adults to share some of the reading.

Please see the document ‘ELS information for parents’ and follow the link for the order in which sounds are taught.

Maths

We follow the Hertfordshire ‘Essentials’ scheme.

This half term we will continue exploring the part/whole model and number bonds.

An example and one way of exploring it, is shown below:

 Teacher: Tell me about what you see.

 Child: I can see the top row is full and I know that the top row has 5 boxes so there are five cubes altogether.

 Teacher: Yes, so the whole number is 5. Which parts can you see, that make up the 5 ?

 Child:  I can see a part with 2 green and a part with 3 red.

 Teacher: So what do we know about 2 and 3 more?

 Child: It makes 5

We will also be practically exploring different ways to make numbers to 10 and developing recall of these number bonds.

These number bond facts will also be applied to real life problems eg I have to get 5 apples for the snack table. I have already got 2 apples. How many more do I need to make 5?  Essentially this question is 2 and how many more to make 5?  or 2 plus  ‘what‘ makes 5?

We will be looking at doubling and halving, odd and even numbers and numbers beyond ten as ten and some more.

Getting ready for transitions in SummerTerm  2 :

In addition to the whole school transition (information for this will be sent out nearer the time), we will be gently getting ready for the transition into Year 1 (I can’t believe we are nearly at that time of the year!) by joining some more whole school assemblies (they ae already joining the rest of the school for singing assemblies and doing a great job!) and visiting the Year 1 classroom for stories etc. We will also spend more time exploring the KS1 playground equipment which the children love.

General reminders including summer uniform :

• PE will continue on Wednesday with Mr Murrin. Please make sure children have their PE kits in school. Every item including the bag must be named, please.
• All children need a named water bottle.
• All uniform must be named. It is impossible for us to be able to distinguish between a number of identical, unnamed items of uniform, that are likely of a similar size.
• Trainers should have Velcro fastening not laces so the children can be independent when changing. Open toe sandals are not to be worn to school for safety reasons.
• When the weather warms up children should all have named sun hats in school. Our expectation is that sun cream will be applied before school. We also ask that each child has their own named sun cream which remains in school, to be reapplied by them but with adult guidance, after lunch.
• Blue shorts and white polo shirts are the uniform for our Reception children.

Please note that our summer uniform does not include dresses or all in one shorts playsuits.

• If you are able to donate a box of tissues and/or a suggested £5 to the toy fund these would be gratefully received . We will use   any toy fund contributions to restock resources for the garden. We also have an Amazon wishlist and have been extremely grateful for items already donated.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to catch me quickly before school or  to chat  after school ,when there is usually more time.

Thank you for your continued support,

Mrs Cornwell

Reception Timetable 

Phonics and Reading

Phonics

We follow a DfE validated systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme called Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS).

What is phonics?

Synthetic phonics is a way of teaching children to read. It teaches children how sounds are represented by written letters. Children are taught to read words by blending these sounds together to make words. For example, they will be taught that the letters ‘m-a-t’ blend together to make ‘mat’.

A synthetic phonics programme, such as ELS, provides a structure for teaching these sounds in a certain order to build up children’s learning gradually. It is used daily during Reception and Year 1 to teach all the sounds in the English language.

How is ELS taught in school?

With ELS, there is a daily phonics lesson where children are taught a new sound, or where they review sounds learned earlier in the week. This is shown to the class on the whiteboard.

Children learn the letters that represent the sounds. They are then asked to read words and sentences with the new sounds in. Children will also practise writing the letters that represent the sounds.

Additional support

ELS is delivered using a whole-class approach. This ensures that all children benefit from the full curriculum. Children who encounter difficulties are supported by the teacher throughout the lesson, and where further support is required, ELS has three interventions to ensure that any learning gaps are quickly filled. These are intended to be short and concise. This helps ensure that children do not spend excessive time outside of the classroom or in group intervention sessions where they are removed from the rest of the curriculum.

Assessment

It is important that children’s progress is assessed thoroughly, so that any gaps can quickly be identified.

Assessment of the children’s reading skills is key to ensuring that all children make rapid progress through the programme, and that they keep up rather than catch up.

We assess children’s phonic knowledge in the fifth week of each half term, to allow all members of staff to target and close any gaps that may be present in either sound knowledge or reading skills. By undertaking assessment in the fifth week we are able to action a direct intervention before any upcoming school holidays.

Decodable readers

It is vital that whilst children are learning to read, they read books that match their phonic knowledge. The Oxford University Press decodable readers support Essential Letters and Sounds and have been carefully matched to every aspect of the programme. We use these books in school and as take-home readers.

How can I help at home?

Practising the sounds

You can help your child practise the sounds they have been learning at school. Download the charts from the Oxford Owl for Home website so you can see the list of sounds in the order they’ll be taught: Essential Letters and Sounds - Oxford Owl You can show these to your child along with the picture to help them remember.

Reading decodable books

Your child will bring home reading books with words that use the sounds they have been learning in school. You may hear these reading books called ‘decodable books’. Use the prompts inside the front and back covers to enjoy the book together and help your child practise reading.

By reading and re-reading texts both in school and at home we offer children the opportunity to develop a cohesive orthographic map of the words within our language. This in turn helps to build their reading fluency. The more you can read at home with your child, the better. We ask that children read the decodable reader they bring home at least three times during the week.

You can find more information about ELS, including the order the sounds are taught in, on the Oxford Owl website: Essential Letters and Sounds - Oxford Owl

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Please click on the links below to see the sounds the children learn as part of ELS.

To support their love of reading, children will also be encouraged to choose a 'sharing book' - this is a book that may or may not be fully decodable but can be enjoyed with parents and family members as a book to read together.

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Topic Map - Spring Term 2025

Clean Up!  

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