Keeping you updated on attainment and progress
Throughout this year your child’s progress will be observed, tracked and assessed to create an 'Early Learning Profile. This will be compiled by their class teacher as well as other adults that work closely with your child within the Early Years setting.
Throughout your child's time in Reception, your child will learn about, and be assessed against the following areas of learning, known as Early Learning Goals.
The areas of learning are:
- Communication and Language
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
To create your child's individual Early Learning profile, we use an online and interactive recording system, Early Essence.
Early Essence allows us to closely track your child's progress and experiences in the foundation stage of their academic journey and allows us to share this with parents and carers (with your consent). You can also add your own photos and information too! This supports with ensuring a close relationship between school and parents and carers, putting your child at the heart of all we do.
In addition to Early Essence, we schedule Parent and teacher meetings are twice a year, along with a summary and full progress report.
If you have any concerns regarding your child or their progress prior to scheduled reporting, you can contact the class teacher to arrange an appointment.
Literacy: Handwriting
When your child is writing make sure that they are sitting comfortably and that their book is at an angle which will help their writing flow. Below is the formation that we teach in school.
In the foundation stage of handwriting, developing 'fine motor skills' is key. Within the setting, we will ensure a variety of mark making provision both inside and outside. This could include shaving foam, sticks and mud, playdough and more to help develop these key skills.
In addition, specific handwriting is taught through strategies such as:
- dedicated handwriting sessions both whole class and small group
- Overwriting
- letter formation using a range of mark making tools
- rhymes to help remember formation
- emphasis on the 'pincer' (froggy fingers) or tripod (rabbit) grips
- through Floppy Phonics
- opportunities within independent provision to mark make, linked to topics.
Literacy: Early Reading and Phonics
We send books home with children, appropriate to their level of reading, on a regular basis.
We follow the Floppy Phonics scheme. This is a recommended, synthetic teaching tool, that engages learners from the start.
In Early Years, Phonics is taught daily, for 20 minutes, following the following format:
- Revisit
- Teach
- Apply
- Practise
We ensure that phonics is taught to match your child's ability. This means that your child may start their reading journey with a picture book until they can 'blend' sounds successfully. They will then recieve a book that is linked specifically to the phonic patterns and 'helpful words' that have been taught. All children develop their phonic blending at different stages throughout the year and progress is closely monitored.
What can you do at home to support your child with reading?
- Practise blending. Sounds are sent home.
- Games
- Sound bags
- Share stories with discussions
- Encourage children to make up their own stories
- Look at signs and sounds around the environment
- Listen for initial sounds
- Support your child by sharing their school book with them and completing their reading record.
Adults in Early Years will read with your child at least once per week. Please ensure your child returns their reading packet daily to enable us to share our comments with you.
If you would like any support with this, please ask your child's teacher.
Literacy: Writing and Spellings
In the foundation stages of learning to spell, children are encouraged to use the segmenting method.
Segmenting means 'sounding out', whereby children are taught to sound out the word and count the sounds (not letters) on their fingers, or use a phoneme frame.
Some words can not be segmented. These are referred to as 'helpful words'; words we learn by heart. Here are the helpful words we focus on in Early Years:
Mathematics: Number and Shape of the Week
Laying the foundations for number and shape is key in supporting children with their Mathematical learning in the future and we use White Rose Maths Hub to support and to ensure progression through school from the early years.
The emphasis is on a concrete, practical and abstract approach, with the aim of children being able to subitise numbers. This means children will be able to look at a group of numbers and recognise the value, without the need to count.
To enable this, we initial work with number and shape of the week. Activities will include:
- building numbers using numicon, base 10, building bricks
- Using the 'Mastering Maths' programme to progress 'number sense' as an aid visulisation and real life contexts, this could be fingers, dice, 10 frames and more.
- experimenting with practical equipment to experiment with the number of the week and different combinations to create that number (number bonds), e.g. 5= 1 + 5, 5= 2+3 etc
In Early Years, we ensure full coverage of all Early Learning Goals, from Birth to 5 years, using non-statatory guidance from the Government document, Development Matters. We strive to provide an inclusive and accessible curriculum for all children, with a focus on interactive and practical learning, with both indoor and outdoor provision. To see how we deliver this, please see our curriculum map.