Beech Grove Primary School
Reception
Autumn Term 2023
Head Teacher’s Message
Welcome back to our new Autumn term. On behalf of the staff we would like to welcome you to a new school year and hope that 2023/2024 is just as awesome as last year. It was brilliant to see our whole school community trying their very best for our children to try and reach their maximum potential. I am positive this year will be exactly the same.
Once again, I cannot thank you enough for the tremendous efforts you went to during this period. We should, as a school community be really proud of the way we (as we always do) stuck together and supported one another.
I hope that you have all had the chance to relax and recharge your batteries during the summer holidays. It is so important that our children attend regularly in order to continue to make the brilliant progress that they made last academic year. I’m positive with your continued support, our excellent teaching and well-planned curriculum and interventions, our children will continue to achieve well and try their very best in all lessons.
I continue to be amazed and am so proud of them all and the way they have started back this Autumn term. The children’s continued resilience and adaptability is absolutely outstanding.
As always, our teachers have lots of interesting activities planned for this term and hope that you will enjoy hearing what children have been working on at consultation meetings, and will support them with their homework and reading outside of school. Reading is the key to EVERYTHING and unlocking the children’s true potential! Please, please, please x10000000 encourage them as much as you can with their reading at home. It is greatly appreciated.
John Dixon
English
In Reception the children will be following our Read Write Inc whole school phonics programme. The children will learn a new sound every day and begin to orally blend using “Fred Talk” (hearing separate sounds such as c-a-t and being able to blend them together to hear cat). Look out for our Read Write Inc sounds on Seesaw. In Reception we will be working on early writing skills such as good pencil grip, scissor skills, mark making and correctly forming our new Read Write Inc sounds each day. Each day every child will practise writing their name for their morning job. Your child will begin hearing and identifying the initial sound in words and as the term progresses begin writing CVC words, such as dog, using our “Fred Fingers” Read Write Inc technique. In class we will be sharing a range of story books linked to our topics and children will begin to re-tell stories themselves. We will begin to share stories in small groups as part of Guided Reading and use book vocabulary such as title, author and blurb.
Maths
In the first week of Reception we will be carrying out a maths assessment to identify any gaps in the children’s number knowledge. We will ensure each child receives support to fill the gaps so that they are ready to access the Reception Maths Curriculum. We will be following the NCETM Mastering number programme, teaching the children to subitise (say ‘how many?’ without counting) to 5, compare numbers, count and begin to understand the composition of numbers to 5. Please log in to Seesaw to help your child complete their maths homework.
Topic
Our topic for Autumn 1 is ‘Why do squirrels hide their nuts?’ – This half term, we will explore the seasonal changes that happen in the natural world during the autumn. This will include an Autumn walk to Albert park, where we will collect autumn treasures and crunch through piles of autumn leaves. We will also learn about woodland animals, discussing hibernation and how animals prepare for winter.
Our topic for Autumn 2 is ‘What happens when I fall asleep?’–
In this topic we will learn about how good bedtime routines can have a positive impact on our health. We will discuss things that happen at night whilst we are sleeping such as people who go to work during the night and the nocturnal animals that are busy while we sleep. After looking at patterns of stars, we will make our very own constellations.
A part of our RE lessons we will learn about different celebrations including; Diwali, festival of Sukkot and the Christmas story.
Safeguarding (What we are teaching children to help them keep safe)
During this term we will be talking to the children about keeping safe as the evenings get darker and keeping safe around fireworks.
Jigsaw- We will be introducing Jigsaw Jenie and teaching the children some calming techniques. Our topics will be Being Me in my World, where we talk about settling in to our new class and Celebrating Differences where we talk about being unique and special.
Dates for your Diary
Autumn Term: Monday 4th September 2023 – Friday 22nd December 2023
Half Term: Monday 30th October 2023 – Friday 3rd November 2023
