WELCOME TO RECEPTION 

Cygnets, Ducklings and Goslings are hatching new ideas and exploring and beginning to learn about the world around them.

We dive into new learning experiences, always making a splash, do our best to get along swimmingly and are discovering how to spread our learning wings and fly.  Find our weekly learning below. 

Please feel free to contact us on the following email addresses:

Cygnets - sglew@white-rock-primary.torbay.sch.uk

Goslings - bayling@whiterockprimaryschool.co.uk

Ducklings - sbarlow@white-rock-primary.torbay.sch.uk

               - vwhite@white-rock-primary.torbay.sch.uk

You can also contact Mrs Howard - nhoward@white-rock-primary.torbay.sch.uk

This Terms Theme

'Explore more'

(For more information about this term's theme, scroll down to our curriculum map)

Upcoming events

Meet The Team

This week's learning 28.6.21

We have been making the most of the sunshine, searching for bugs in the Woodlands and making rubbings on the trees and stones.  

We have been learning about the story 'Rumble in the Jungle' and writing our own animal poems.  We have even made our own animal masks.

In phonics we are challenging ourselves to recognise consonant clusters in our reading and listening carefully for them when we segment words in our writing.

In maths, we have been practising using positional language whilst continuing to practise number facts.

This week's learning 21.6.21

We met a real live author this week.  Joseph Coelho virtually visited Key Stage 1 and Reception and read us some of his stories and poems.  We were even able to ask him some questions about what it is like being an author.

In maths, we are getting really good at recalling number facts such as numberbonds to 5 and some of us can even recall numberbonds to 10.  We are enjoying practising our doubling facts and we are now able to tell you whether an amount is odd or even.

Because we are interested in number patterns, we have also been exploring patterns in the environment, recreating animal prints in paint.

This week's learning 14.6.21

This week we have been enjoying another one of Julia Donaldson's books "The Monkey Puzzle".  We have been thinking hard about describing words so that we can describe the little monkey's mum and we have been writing some of these descriptions onto lost posters.  It has been fun looking for the monkey's mum in the woodlands area.

In maths, we have been practising our doubling facts.  We have started noticing patterns in numbers that make doubles and we are beginning to think about odds and evens.

Week beginning 7.6.21

It was great to see all of your smiley faces again!  It looks like you have been enjoying the sunshine during half term.  

In Cygnets and Goslings, the children watched a video of their butterflies being released into the flowers.  The Ducklings' caterpillars must have been a little more sleepy and they were able to see their butterflies being released live into the wild.

We have had fun, this week, reading the story of Sid's Six Dinners and learning the new words "suspicious" and "furious".  We have acted the story out and retold it in many different ways.  We are getting more independent in our writing and made up our own sentences to write in our learning journeys.

In Maths, we have been recapping doubling in preparation for learning about odds and evens.  We are playing lots of games to embed our knowledge of doubling facts.

Week beginning 24.5.21

In the week leading up to the half-term holiday, we have been watching our caterpillars transform inside their chrysalises.  Towards the end of the week they were beginning to wiggle, so we packed them a lunch - cut up apples and flowers - and packed them off with our teachers to take care of them over the holidays.

We have learned so much new vocabulary this week and can talk about our butterflies like real experts.

In writing, we have been segmenting polysyllabic words about butterflies as we write about the facts we have been learning.

In maths, we have been trying really hard to remember the rhymes that help us to form our numbers correctly.

This week's learning 17.5.21

This week, we have been exploring the planets of our solar system, learning lots of facts and writing and drawing about the planets.

We have also been exploring colours and what happens when we mix them.

In Maths, we have been examining the composition of numbers to ten.

Week beginning 10.5.21

The children have had fun in the woodlands this week, making wands out of natural items and hunting for footprints.

In maths, we have been telling our own subtraction stories featuring aliens and their snacks and astronauts on rockets.  The children are getting very good at writing these stories down as number sentences.

We have been rhyming in literacy, learning about the story Goodnight Moon, and writing parts of the story in our learning journeys.

This week we also had a fire drill.  The children were so good at walking smartly and lining up quietly on the field.

Week beginning 4.5.21

The children are learning lots about sharing, using words like "same", "fair" and "equal".  They have enjoyed sharing space cookies between scientists and space food between aliens and thought hard about what to do when objects to share are different in colour, size or form.

In phonics, we have been talking about capital letters and how to use them.  We have been learning the alphabet song, forming capital letters in handwriting and learning the letter names, matching them to their corresponding phonic sounds.

In literacy, we have been learning facts about the moon and applying our knew knowledge in our writing. 

We have danced to space music, too and got messy with balls and paint to make planets.  We are having a lovely time exploring the books about space in our topic boxes.

Back on earth, we have searched for animal footprints in the woodlands and used natural objects to make paint brushes.

This week's learning 26.4.21

Something rather unexpected happened to the doubling machine in maths this week: it started working in reverse!  Some of the grown-ups had trouble sharing a cake, too, but luckily, the children have explained that when you cut something or divide something in half, it has to be the same or equal to be fair!

The children have also been practising using their phonic fingers looking for space words to read.

We have looked in a little more depth at "Whatever Next" and thought about the concept of imagination.

In the real world, the potatoes are sprouting and the caterpillars are thriving!

Lots of children have been making planets by rolling balls in paint.

This week's learning 19.4.21

It's been an action-packed week at the White Rock Space School!

The children have made aliens out of sparkly space dough and learned about doubling in maths by counting aliens' arms and looking at stars in a mirror.

We have also brought in essential space kit (wellies and colanders) for a trip to the moon inspired by the book "Whatever Next" and wrote some sentences about the story.

There have been lots of space role-plays around the provision using moon dust and building space rockets, too.

Our children are getting really good at spotting digraphs and blending words and have used their phonic knowledge to feed our aliens Obb and Bob with real and fake words.

We have also been drawing constellations with oil pastels and making alien mud faces in the woodlands.

This week's learning 29.3.21

With Easter just around the corner, the children have been excited about exploring their learning with eggs and bunnies.  The children have been on tricky word Easter egg hunts, they have written messages to hide inside eggs, they have sorted digraphs in words on eggs and fed real and fake words on carrots to the real and fake Easter bunny.

In phonics, we are really beginning to get the hang of reading words containing phase 3 digraphs, and many of us are able to segment these words in our writing, too.  We are getting better and better at recognising tricky words, but this needs lots of practise!

In literacy, we have been re-telling the story of The Little Red Hen and writing short sentences using story language.  We have debated whether the Little Red Hen was right not to share the bread or not and learned that it is okay to have a different opinion to our friends. 

In maths, we have been telling number stories and practising writing them too.  We have begun to use the language of subtraction.

We have also made some Easter chicks with playdough and painted patterns on egg shapes with cotton.

Phew!  Only four weeks and we have come so far already.  We are really looking forward to beginning our new topic after Easter.

This week's learning 22.3.21

Inspired by nature, the children have been making rainbows and planting seeds and potatoes.  We have discovered that our seedlings need soil, water and sunshine to grow.

We have been reading and writing instructions for planting and having fun re-enacting The Enormous Turnip.

We are getting very good at our number bonds to ten, practising this with ladybirds' spots and people on buses.

This week's learning 15.3.21

The children have had fun stomping like giants and shouting fee fi fo fum in a drama activity based on Jack and the Giant Beanstalk.  We have also practised our phonic knowledge by writing this phonetically.  We are enjoying reading the story and acting it out with our friends, retelling the story in the small world area.  Some of the children have written parts of the story, too.

In maths, we have discovered some magic beans which we have been using to make number bonds to ten.  We can also say which amounts are more or less.

In phonics, we have been practising our tricky words and challenging ourselves to use the trigraphs air, ear and ure in our reading and writing.

With spring well on the way, we have been looking closely at daffodils and painting them with fine paint brushes.  We are being careful to wash our paint brushes before dipping them into different colours.  We have discovered, however, that we can make green by mixing blue and yellow.

This week's learning 8.3.21

We are all so glad to be back together again!  The children are doing really well at getting back into a routine and are wowing their teachers with their enthusiasm to learn.

The children are delighted with some of our lovely new things in the classroom: a huge wooden castle; a pirate ship; some very noisy percussion instruments and a cascading water tray.

In phonics, we have been showing our teachers how far we have come with our remote learning.  In literacy, we have been reading The Gingerbread Man and using our phonic knowledge to write our own version of the story.  In maths, inspired by the book "How Many Legs" by Kes Gray and Jim Field, we have been counting animals' legs, sharing number facts about them and talking about less and more.  We are also busy making Mother's Day cards for Mothering Sunday.

This week's learning 7.11.20

Christmas is now in full swing in Reception.  The children have been posting letters to Santa, racing with wind-up Santas and role-playing in the elves' grotto and in the gingerbread house.  We have been using our fine-motor skills putting decorations on the tree, and making up narratives with the Nativity small world.  We are enjoying dressing up and applying our learning about the Nativity.  We have made reindeer Christmas cards for our grown-ups - painting our hands was an extremely tickly business!

In maths, we are learning that heavy things are difficult to lift and we can now tell someone which things are heavy and which are light.  Some of the children have applied this in their learning in the sand and water. 

We are working hard to learn our digraphs and we are practising using them in our reading and writing.

Week beginning 30.11.20

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas in Cygnets, Ducklings and Goslings!  The children have been talking about Christmas wishes and finding out about the Christmas wishes of some of our staff.  The children have been using their phonic knowledge to write Christmas lists and letters to Santa and we have been so impressed with how they have learned to use their phonic fingers to segment words.

In maths, we have been exploring capacity.  We have been weighing Christmas presents, and measuring the length of crackers!

Week beginning 23.11.20

This week we've gone from stick insects to Stick Man in our learning.  To develop our oracy, we have been playing a game of "Would you rather..." linking it to some of the situations poor Stick Man finds himself in in the story.  The children have been learning to show that they have listened to their friends' ideas and how to agree or disagree without falling out!  

We are getting so good at learning our sounds and tricky words and we are even challenging ourselves by being digraph detectives!

In maths, we have been looking at individual numbers in detail and we are beginning to see how addition and subtraction works.

The stick insects are still alive and well and enjoying their holiday in the Goslings' classroom.

Week beginning 16.11.20

Stick insects have been our obsession this week.  We have been learning fascinating facts about them and writing about them in literacy.  We have learned some impressive new words to use in our talk about them like camouflage, environment and antennae.  We have held real stick insects in our hands and made lovely representations of them with various art resources.

In maths, we have been practising our number formation.  It's amazing how far we have come with this!

Phonics is becoming more tricky and we are adding digraphs qu and ch to our bank of sounds.

Week beginning 9.11.20

Things changed quite dramatically around school this week, but we are happy and cosy in our own little bubbles.  We even have our own special toys to play with in our own section of the playground! 

The stick insects in Goslings are still healthy and happy and are being looked after very well.

We have been counting, recognising numbers, and talking about more and less in maths.

In literacy, we have been enjoying the story "Pumpkin Soup".  We are getting so good at writing CVC words and some of us are even writing captions!

In art, we have been looking at paintings of poppies by Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh.  Some of us have been painting our own poppy pictures, too.

Week beginning 3.11.20

We were so glad to see you all back in school this week after the holidays.  It was great for the children to see their friends again; everyone had lots of exciting news to share.  And there was a special surprise: we have real stick insect pets to look after!  The children have had fun learning about the stick insects.  They have also been busy learning in the vets role-play area.

The children hadn't forgotten their learning over the holidays, either.  We are so impressed with their blending and segmenting of CVC words.

In provision, the children have been talking about fireworks, making firework collages and drawing them in chalk on the ground.  Some children have had a go at writing firework sounds, too.

We have had fun making rhymes with CVC words with Wezley the Wizard.

In maths, we have been talking about the concepts of more and less.  How do we know that a group of objects is more than another?  Because "more is bigger", of course!

Week beginning 19.10.20

Learning has had a touch of magic this week with witches and wizards making brews with initial sounds, printing pumpkin faces with potatoes, using our fine motor skills to make spiders and to balance eyeballs on golf tees.  We have even had some broomstick races!  We have been reading about Meg and Mog and even writing about them.

In maths, we have been learning the difference between 2D and 3D shapes.  We now know the names of both 2D and 3D shapes and have had fun finding them in our environment.

We have had so much fun with our learning this term.  Look how far we have come!

Week beginning 12.10.20

As the weather becomes increasingly autumnal, we have been observing how our surroundings change and reflecting on how much we have changed since we arrived in September.

We have been busy decorating a "tree" with tissue paper in autumn colours.  We have also been using corks and paint in reds, orange, yellows and browns to make beautiful autumn tree pictures.

In maths, we have been learning the names of shapes and talking about their properties.

We were so excited to take our first reading books home this week!  New ones will be put into the bags every Thursday.  (We take them in on Mondays and put them in a cupboard to keep everyone safe, avoiding cross-contamination from lots of homes).  The children are getting really good at recognising their phonemes and some of them are beginning to blend the phonemes into words.  

In Spanish, we are learning the numbers 1-6!

Week beginning 5.10.20

This week we have gone "Gruffalo crazy" making Gruffalo crumble, counting with woodland objects, playing with the characters from the Gruffalo in their own small woodland world and even making Gruffalo crowns.  The children have even searched for the characters from the story in our woodland, trying to climb the trees to find the owl!  

We can now recite parts of the Gruffalo and we know the story really well.  Ask us if we can describe what the Gruffalo looks like using story language from the book!

In Spanish, we are getting very good at saying colours and we made our own colour puppets to help us remember.

The children were very excited to take reading books and reading diaries home this week.  They can't wait to share them with their grown-ups and show off their new blending and phonic skills!

Week beginning 28.9.20

This week a mystery spaceship crashed into the Woodland Area.  Luckily, Captain Beattie left us some clues.  We used our new phonic knowledge to decode the names of the superheroes that were lost in the crash: Sam, Pat, Nat and Stan.  We practised writing these names in our books. 

We had great fun exploring the Woodland looking for clues, putting on superhero costumes and making superhero masks.

We have been very busy ordering the numbers 1-10 and beyond on Mr O'Sullivan's washing line, on pebbles and on hedgehogs.

In Spanish, we learned colours and played some fun games with a box of surprises. 

Week beginning 21st September

This week we have been learning new phonemes and graphemes: s a t p and the tricky word "the".  We have learned the sounds (phonemes) with some actions to go with them and have had a go at forming the graphemes (written letters) in the air, on our hands, in the sand, and on big pieces of paper.  Some of us can write our names and we keep practising this important skill.

We have been exploring the maths resources to practise our understanding of number, making amounts with number beads, cubes and Numicon, and finding the corresponding number on our number cards.

We have been learning new words in Spanish to explain how we feel and playing some fun Spanish games.

We have taken advantage of the good weather in the Woodland too.  There are lots of interesting spiky horse chesnut casings and pine cones to discover.

This week we have been learning to take care of our classrooms, our belongings, the woodlands and our friends.

We have been working hard to 'reset' our classrooms when we have finished our learning and to make sure the woodlands looks great for when we go to play there again. 

We are making lots of new friends and trying out lots of different activities when we explore each of the classrooms and the area outside.

We have also been learning Spanish!  We can say Hola! And some of us can say "Me llamo..." to say our names.  We have also learned some actions to go with "Buenos noches" and "Buenos dias".

Taking off our shoes and socks before dance is tricky but we are getting better and better at doing it ourselves.

We are enjoying the stories that we take home and we are talking about them to our grown ups and our friends.

Our First Days at School - 7.9.20

We have had a great time settling in to our new school. We have explored our new environment and begun to build new friendships. 

RECEPTION PHONICS 

OVERVIEW OF LETTERS AND SOUNDS

Below is a chart showing the order that children will be taught in.

Phase 1

• Listening to and for sounds
• Rhythm and rhyme
• Alliteration

Phase 2

• Sounds taught: s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k , ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss
• Tricky words: the, to, go, no

Phase 3

• Sounds taught: j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er
• Tricky words: no, go, I, the, to, he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, they, her, all, are

Phase 4

• Recap all previous sounds
• Teach reading and spelling tricky words: said, so, he, we, me, be, have, like, some, come, was, you, were, little, one, they, all, are, do, when, out, what, my, her
• Read and write the words with their initial and/or final blends: st, nd, mp, nt, nk, ft, sk, lt, lp, tr, dr, gr, cr, br, fr, bl, fl, gl, pl, cl, sl, sp, st, tw, sm, nch, shr, str, thr

Phase 5

• Learn new phonome zh
• Teach new graphemes for reading ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e
• Teach reading tricky words oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, water, where, who, again, thought, through , work, mouse, many, laughed, because, different, any, eyes, friends, once, please.
• Teach spelling words said, so have, like, some, were, there, oh, their, people Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked.
• Teach alternative spellings for ch, j, m, n, r, s, z, u, i, ear, ar, air, or, ur, oo, ai, ee, igh, oa, y/oo, oo, sh

Phase 6

• Understand and supply suffixes—ed, ing, ful, est, er, ment, ness, en, s, es
• Understand the rules of adding ing, ed, er, est, ful, ly, y
• Investigate how adding suffixes and prefixes changes words
• Introduce the past tense

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Glossary

Phoneme - The smallest unit of speech-sounds which make up a word.

Grapheme - The written representation of sounds

Tricky word - Word which can’t be sounded out

Key words - High frequency words

VC Word - Vowel consonant word (it, as)

CVC Word - Word made up of a consonant, vowel, consonant (cat, dog)

Initial sound - First sound in a word