Welcome to Reception at Bramley Park Academy
Learning in Reception is all about laying the foundations of all future learning through having fun and having lots of hands-on practical experiences. We do lots of that from the very moment we walk through the door.
Our Curriculum
Our curriculum is rich in stories and songs to support our language development and to open up the door to a range of themes, topics and hooks to inspire our curiosity and wonder! Through careful planning we cover all 7 areas of the EYFS curriculum and build our love of learning on the way! We lay the foundations ready for the KS1 curriculum to build on so it is really important that we learn all about the past and present, the people who live in our communities as well as how to use a range of music and art skills. We also have a wonderful journey into the world of reading and writing.
Take a look at our long term curriculum maps on the main page to see what exciting adventures and skills we are learning each half term! I bet you cannot wait to join us!
Phonics in Reception
We love our SuperSonic Phonic Friends!
To support the planning and delivery of phonics in school, we use Supersonic Phonic Friends to provide rigorous, well-planned, consistent daily engaging phonics lessons.
During the Reception year we are introduced to phonemes and their corresponding graphemes. We begin to look at single letter sounds and the representing spelling for this. This enables us to then begin to read and write three letter words; matching the grapheme to the sound we can hear.
As we become confident and fluent readers and writers of CVC words we are then introduced to digraphs; where two letters make one sound. Throughout the whole of the reception year our phonic teaching relies on the firm foundations of orally blending and segmenting and is deep rooted in rhythm and rhyme. By the end of EYFS we should be fluent with all 44 sounds; including one way to represent them. We also learn to read and write tricky words such as I, no, go, to, the.
Making Maths Magic – Our journey into counting and numbers!
Over the course of the year we use the White Rose scheme of work to enable us to count, match, order and manipulate numbers to 10 and beyond. We will be introduced to different concrete resources such as counties, bead strings, numicon and tens frames to allow us to develop a fast recall of groups of objects as well as use these tools for addition and subtraction. We will embed all our learning through play based meaningful activities that will allow teachers to stretch and challenge our thinking.
Through our maths sessions we will also look at shapes, weight, capacity and size to give a firm foundation of these concepts and to use the correct vocabulary to compare and contrast.
Bringing the curriculum to life
Every week in Reception our learning starts with a hook from a book. This will introduce new thinking or vocabulary we will need to support us for the week. As well as this we will also have half termly trips or experiences to support our knowledge and understanding of our themes. Alongside this we will also explore the interest of the children.
We like to ‘Spread the Happiness’.
We are a Spread the Happiness accredited school which means all our staff deliver sessions around Dough Disco, Squiggle me into a Writer and Making Maths Magic. These programmes are designed to strengthen muscles, support recognition and recall and develop fine motor skills ready for writing. We firmly believe that these structures give all children the best start in life as well as having lots of fun! Look out for our challenges as there are lots of fun things to do before you turn 5!
A day in Reception
On a morning we self register ourselves in class by writing our names and then it is time for our Early Bird maths challenges! We sing, count and complete a range of maths activities linked to our prior learning and this helps us to get ready for the day ahead!
After our morning routine it is time for our topic and literacy input. This is where the excitement begins as we start our adventure into the learning focus for the week. Three times a week we take part in Drawing Club where we spend time together creating wonderful drawings and writing linked to a key text or video of the week. For the other days we use our theme or text to learn about a range of wonderful topics such as space, dinosaurs, our bodies and minibeasts. We will sing, act, read and take part in a range of activities linked to our objective of the week.
Before lunch it is time for SuperSonic Phonic Friends! Our wonderful new phonic scheme alongside the characters enables us to practise our reading and writing. We learn a sound a day and use them to form words using orally blending and segmenting. We will then learn a new sound of the day and apply this to word reading, writing and then apply it to a caption and sentence. By the end of the year we will have learnt 44 spellings!
After lunch we have our Making Maths Magic session where we develop our counting and recognition skills relating to number, shape and measures. We will learn to add and subtract, double and halve and recall our number bonds to 10. We take part in a range of songs and activities linked to our counting skills and then practice these in our play. We become confident in counting in 1s, 2s and 10s.
At the end of the day we love to go to the Dough Disco! We squeeze, squash and dance our way to being a good writer with fantastic pencil grip! We also take part in Poetry Basket where we learn lots of different poems and actions and perform for each other and the school!
A huge and crucial part of our day is play. We spend a long time playing in each area of our wonderful classroom; guided and supported by an adult. Every area is carefully thought out to support learning across all 7 areas and enhanced by the children’s interests. Play is crucial for us to develop our social and communication skills as well as to embed, revisit and review things our teacher has shown us in inputs or from self discovery. We encourage exploration, curiosity and wonder and promote sustained and shared thinking around how/why things work.
Our wonderful outdoor area plays a key role in our learning and can be accessed for extended periods in both the morning and afternoon. Outside we can use large scale movements to run, balance, climb, paint, dance and most importantly to take risks!
Underpinning all our learning and development is the essential skill of talk. We have a great intervention called WELLCOMM to support vocabulary development and throughout the day there are lots of opportunities to talk to friends, teachers and even Hamish, our school dog!
We end the day with a story, a song, some RE or PSHE. A day in reception is a busy one! 