We welcome you to the wonderful world of Reception! Where our children enter a world of imagination that ignites their learning journey.
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) includes 7 areas of learning and development: We develop every area of learning within our EYFS, with an end goal of creating a child who is well rounded and ready to take their next step in their education.
3 Prime Areas
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication & Language
- Physical Development
4 Specific Areas
- Literacy
- Maths
- Understanding of the World
- Expressive Arts & Design
In the moment
We use a lot of ‘in the moment’ teaching strategies to really ignite children’s engagement and maximize pupil progress. We follow children’s interests and through high quality interactions create an environment where children love to learn and thrive. Staff in our Reception classrooms are the vocabulary models the children need to begin the journey of literacy. We introduce the children to a rich and varied diet of vocabulary and use pictures and real-life hooks to aid understanding. Teachers model the use of our provision and children are intrigued. They copy and take a deep interest in the learning surrounding them.
Awe and wonder
We aim to create learners who are keen to explore and learn new things for themselves. They will take their own ideas and work with excitement to overcome problems that they face. They will demonstrate a deep level of engagement and because of this they will revel in their own success and become resilient learners. We provide provision and experiences that will really make the children stop and think and create the air of awe and wonder we are aiming for.
Awe and wonder can be found in the simplest of things – a rainbow after an April shower, the first buds in spring, the smell of rain falling on a summer’s day, a frosty cobweb in the garden or raindrops plopping in a puddle. We relish these moments and our children do too!
Team chat
We use ‘team chat’ as a basis for our assessment. All staff get together as a team and discuss their observations and needs of the children. This informs teacher led activities, interventions and provision needed for child-initiated learning. We are a family at Kader and everyone’s opinion is truly valued.
A love of reading
We immerse our children in stories from the very start of their journey at Kader academy. Using power of reading strategies based around creativity and speaking and listening. We have reading opportunities available in every area and focus a lot of our learning around books. From the outset children are exposed to high quality literature, with incredible vocabulary and diverse characters.
Maths
We build the foundations for keen Mathematicians in our EYFS. We focus heavily on number. Looking at what they are worth and how they are formed. We make maths active, interactive and most importantly fun! Children use concrete apparatus to explore and build pictorial representations of key Mathematical concepts. We enjoy using:
Number blocks , numicon and number fun as part of our teaching and learning programme.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=number+blocks
Phonics
Listening skills are fundamental to a successful educational journey. We develop these early listening skills through phase one phonics. The teachers plan for and incorporate lots of the strategies to build key listening skills. Once we feel that children have this solid foundation, we begin to teach phase 2 phonics. We do this in a fun and exciting way – with stories, picture hooks and writing prompts. We use Read, Write, Inc as a base for our phonics teaching, but have adapted it to suit the needs of our own children at Kader. We operate our phonics lessons in small groups so that children are receiving the phonetic diet that they really need. We send home books that are carefully matched to children’s confidence in phonics and complete regular phonic assessments to keep a handle on progress and children’s needs. We have seen fantastic progress in phonics and children within our Reception leave us with firm foundations ready for their next step.
See below a link to a teacher completing set 2 and 3 phonics lessons. Speak to your child’s class teacher if you are unsure what sound your child is up to.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=laura+suthers
Writing
In Reception, we build on our learning in Nursery by developing a further understand of how sounds are represented in a written format. Once we know the basic single-sound code, we are able to combine these to make simple words and sentences. Of course, because we are in Early Years, this is centered both around explicit teaching and through further exploration and play in the areas, including the use of the outdoor areas. There are writing opportunities everywhere you look! We are still working hard on developing our fine and gross motor skills to make sure our fingers are strong enough for the precision needed to control a pencil. We love to use Talk for Writing to learn stories and poems for us to mimic and adapt to create our own. By the end of the year, you won’t believe how much we are able to write ready for Year 1!
Reception Teachers
Miss McGlynn
Mrs Naseer
Mrs Woodward
Miss Laden
Miss Dunn
Parent communication
We strongly believe that having a strong home/ school relationship is the key to your child’s success. We encourage parents to add to their child’s assessment by using our home/school APP -SEESAW.
All children have their own unique code for SEESAW. On this platform teachers will share information, updates and most importantly key information about your child’s development and next steps.
We also complete regular questionnaires throughout the year and operate an ‘open door policy’. During COVID however, please feel free to telephone your child’s class teacher if you need to chat.