Reception

Dear Parents

Welcome to Reception class!

I hope you and your child will be happy in our school. If you have any concerns about anything to do with school please come and talk to me at the beginning or the end of the day.

Obviously for the first week you will want to bring your child into the class to help them settle in. I am hoping that by next week the children will be confident enough to say good bye to you and walk into the classroom, on their own. Do encourage them in this.

Mrs Hatchett, our Nursery Nurse, works with us each day and Mrs Marenghi, a Teaching Assistant, will be with us every Wednesday morning.

Can you please give your child every opportunity to dress and undress themselves; this helps enormously when we get changed for P.E. It is also essential that all their clothes are clearly marked so they can find their own belongings! We will have P.E. sessions twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays.

We use the 'Jolly Phonics' scheme to introduce phonemes [the sound a letter makes]. I will be introducing four phonemes each week. The children will bring home a work sheet and a phoneme book so that you can help them to learn the phonemes and practise sounding out words. Could you please return the phoneme book every day so that new phonemes can be added. The work sheet can be kept at home. This term I thought it would be good to invite you to join us for a phonics session each week. We will begin this on Thursday 22nd September 9.00-9.20.

Over the next few weeks your child will have a picture reading book to share with you. We use these to enable the children to make up their own stories and develop their language skills. Please sign the reading record and write a comment if you wish to. The children will also be given the opportunity to choose a library book on a Friday. These can be changed the following week.

We use our outdoor classroom area as much as possible so please make sure your child has a suitable coat. They may come home a bit muddy on occasion!

I would like to ask for a voluntary contribution of 50 pence each week to cover the cost of items for food technology and other curriculum related areas.

I look forward to getting to know all the children and hope we have a happy year together. Thank you in anticipation for your support.

Sincerely

Gillian Bywaters