Hello, I’m Miss Edmundson and I wish you a warm welcome to Wellfield.  We are all looking forward to sharing this exciting learning adventure with you. Please find below important information about the organisation for this school year.

Mrs McNally will support teaching and learning in class on Monday to Friday all day and Miss Green will also be supporting mornings.  Mrs Finn will be supporting Monday to Friday in the afternoons. Mrs McNally will be covering PPA time on Thursday morning. Our forest school sessions will be led by Mr Claxton.

In Year R, children learn best when they experience learning firsthand, through meaningful interactions with others, through physical activity and through play. The Early Years curriculum emphasises three prime areas of learning:

 Personal, social and emotional

 Communication and Language

 Physical

The curriculum breaks down into four further areas of learning:

 Literacy

 Mathematics

 Understanding the world

 Expressive arts and design

Teaching in Reception is organised through a range of approaches and provides a balance of child initiated and adult-led activities:

 Planned focused activities where adults work with a small group of children at a time. Activities will be differentiated to meet the needs of every child participating.

 Small group teaching of early reading and writing through phonics.

 Whole class teaching for short periods of time such as shared story time, direct teaching (for example of Maths), songs and rhymes, discussions and sharing work.

 Opportunities for teachers to work alongside children as they develop their own areas of the curriculum. We will be covering some really exciting topics over the year and the children will be encouraged to explore and ask questions to develop their curiosity and interest.

You can find the yearly overview on the class page below. A new curriculum overview will be sent at the start of each new half-term.

Children will participate in daily phonics sessions with regular practice across the school day and additional support where needed. Wellfield Primary School has chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as its systematic, synthetic Phonics programme to teach early reading and spelling. This year there is a small step to the books children will be bringing home. As part of our new phonics scheme, children will work on one book throughout the week with their teachers. On Friday, they will bring this home and read it independently to you as a celebration of their hard work. Additionally, children will bring home a book of their choice from the library. This is a book to share together as it may not be at their current reading level. Children will get the chance to change the book each week. Be a Shooting star! At Wellfield, we love reading! So, for every week that children read at least three times (with signatures in the reading journal), they will move up our star chart. Every 5 stars receives a small prize with a more significant reward for those that reach 30 weeks across the year.

As the children start their school life in our reception class they will have a Year 5 child to nurture them through their first year. The Year 5 child will be known as the ‘Gardener’ and the Year R child will be known as the ‘seed’. Over the year the children will:

- Read books together on a weekly basis

- Play together

- Write to each other

- Celebrate each other’s achievements.

Children will also be required to complete a piece of phonics homework practicing what we have been learning in phonics that week. If your child has a ‘Next step’ target, we will share this with you. You might be able to help your child with this at home too.

 We think it’s really imperative for you to see your children’s work on a regular basis, we will share your children’s work with you via the ‘Evidence me’ app. Log in details will be given separately. 

Thank you for your continued support,

Miss Edmundson