Reception

 Beech Grove Primary School

Spring Term 2025

Head Teacher’s Message
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to spring term 2025. The time has flown since children started their new classes in September! This Spring term will fly even faster no doubt as the evenings become lighter and the daffodils start to poke through putting a smile on everyone’s face.

As Head teacher of your school, I continue to be so proud of all of the children and the way they have started back since returning from the Christmas break. Their resilience and adaptability remain outstanding.

This was picked up on and noticed in abundance during the schools Ofsted Inspection on the 22nd and 23rd of October. The HMI Ofsted Inspector was blown away of what he described to us as ‘school is an oasis of calm’ for all children at Beech Grove.

“Pupils at Beech Grove are proud of their school, welcoming visitors with exemplary manners and conduct. They understand the school’s ‘next-door neighbour’ principles and the school’s five golden rules well. Pupils consistently show high levels of respect to adults and to one another. They are happy and safe. Highly trained staff put pupils’ needs first in all they do. Pupils thrive in the warm and nurturing environment that the school fosters.” Ofsted 2024/25. What a fantastic first paragraph of the Ofsted Report to read. I’m sure you’ll all agree.

This term we hope to pick up where we left off before Christmas with our children achieving good progress within their core subject areas, due to the tremendous hard-working attitude of themselves and the dedicated staff team here at school.
“Leaders have created a culture of high expectations for pupils’ achievement. Pupils meet these expectations… Behaviour across school is of a high standard. Well-trained staff create a purposeful learning atmosphere. Pupils’ learning is not disrupted by others. ”Ofsted 2024/25.

Children’s classroom and corridor manners remain amazing which continues to maintain a lovely, positive and caring atmosphere around school. The schools “Next Door Neighbour Qualities” of Respect, Tolerance and Kindness are certainly being upheld. The children take great pride in this in and around school and it is wonderful to see. Please keep having a bit of fun at home and test the children regularly on what it takes in school (and the community) to be a good “Next Door Neighbour”!

This term we will also be hoping for some lovely spring sunshine so that children can make full use of our Secret Garden in lesson time and maybe plant some wonderful spring flowers for us all to enjoy (even the ducks!!!). I always think that spring flowers with their vibrant colours and freshness cheer everyone up from the gloom of the long, dark and wet winter months. They are a sign that lighter nights and warmer weather is on its way! (fingers crossed)

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/phone conversations, and will support them with their homework and reading outside of school.

Please, please, please x10000 keep encouraging your child to read at home. Reading is the key to everything! The children are showing such a passion and love of reading in school, we hope you will continue this with them at home.

We also hope that every effort is made by you for every child to attend school regularly. It is so important for your child’s development. We can’t continue to stress this enough. (95% and above is GOOD attendance). As a school we need to bet better on the first and last day of terms. Far too many children have these particular days off.

In addition to this being ON TIME every day for school is absolutely vital so that your child does not miss any of their learning. It can be really upsetting and frustrating for children if they come into a lesson that is part way through and they’ve missed vital teacher input and modelling. It can cause them great distress and being left with a feeling of not understanding what is expected of them.
Its really pleasing to see that our ‘lates’ are reducing and that you are all working really hard to support school on this issue. Well done everyone. Keep up the great efforts. Let’s have all the children in on time every day!

Here’s to a really positive Spring term!

John Dixon

English
Reading:
The children will begin working in their new Read, Write, Inc (RWI) groups and will continue to learn or review a new sound every day. The RWI lessons start at 9.10, so please ensure your child is in on time. The children work in the following small groups;

Group A will be continuing to learn their Set 1 sounds.
Group B will continue to use sound cards to support their blending.
Group C will be learning to read CVC words using ‘Fred Talk’ eg. mad, fit, hen, kit, pen
Ditty and Red group will now extend to a one hour session where the children will read a ditty or a story and write about it too.
We are really pleased with the progress the children are making. Please support your child by asking which sound they learned today and reading the texts they bring home.
Writing We are becoming amazing writers! This term we will be beginning to write a little more independently, practising forming our letters correctly and writing CVC words. We will be using ‘Fred fingers’ (from our RWI lessons) to help us spell any word we want to write.

Maths
In Maths this term we will be continuing with our ‘Mastering Number’ programme. We will be working on counting up to 20 and beyond. We will be continuing to develop our subitising skills. We will be giving more focus to linking a numeral to a quantity. We will order numerals and discuss their value. We will be looking at composing numbers to 10 and talking about what each number can be made of and will begin to learn that 2 equal groups can be called a ‘double’. We will begin to sort odd and even numbers based on their shape using numicon and will look at groups of objects and identifying equal groups and where one group is greater/fewer.

Topic
Our topic for Spring 1 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 night time workers and the nocturnal animals that are busy while we sleep. We will be learning and thinking about future careers and ‘People Who Help Us’ in our school and in our community.

Our topic for Spring 2 is ‘Are carrots orange?’ – In this topic we will talk about our favourite foods and where food comes from. We will discuss why it is important to eat a variety of food to stay healthy and encourage the children to try different foods. We will visit a local supermarket to buy ingredients so we can follow a recipe to make some tasty treats. We will also talk about the benefit of exercise. We will grow some of our own plants and vegetables, learning how to take care of things and what plants need to survive.

Safeguarding (What we are teaching children to help them keep safe)
We will be talking to the children about the importance of a good bedtime routine and making sure we get enough sleep and limiting our screen time before bed. We will continue with our tooth brushing routine every day to promote good oral hygiene and discuss making healthy meal choices at lunch time.

Dates for your Diary
Spring Term:    Monday 6th January 2025 – Friday 11th April 2025
Half Term:        Monday 24th February 2025 – Friday 28th February 2025