Phonics
At St James Primary, we teach phonics using the Ruth Miskin Read Write Inc scheme. For more information for parents regarding early reading and writing, please visit the Read Write Inc website .
Reception
Welcome to St James Primary and welcome to our Reception class. Our class value is KINDNESS
You can find out all about Reception class on this page - including what we are studying this half term and lots of great resources for parents and children. Your home learning for the week can be found on Assignments on your Reception class Teams page. If you have any difficulty with logging in, please let the School Office know.
What are we learning this term?
For more information for parents on the Reception baseline assessment, please click here.
Early Years Phonics
Thank you to everyone who came to our parent phonics talk to hear how we teach phonics in school, Please click here for a copy of Miss Rocca's presentation with links links to helpful websites and ideas on how to support early reading and writing at home
You can also find a list of set 1 phonics sounds and the corresponding mnemonic to form the letter here
Reception Baseline Assessment: Information for Parents
Please find below some information regarding how we are going to be assessing your child’s progress from September 2021 in line with a new statutory framework that is being introduced.
Overview
The Reception baseline assessment (RBA) is a short, task-based assessment of your child’s early literacy, communication, language and mathematics skills when they begin school. It is statutory for all schools from September 2021.
The assessment can take place at any point in the first 6 weeks of your child starting reception. The assessment will form the start of a new measure of how schools are helping their pupils to progress between reception and Year 6.
Your child does not need to prepare. There is no pass mark or score and your child should not realise they’re doing an assessment.
Once the RBA is fully established, the intention is to make the Key Stage 1 national curriculum tests and teacher assessments that children currently take at the end of year 2 non-statutory.
What the assessment involves
During a short one-to-one session with their teacher or teaching assistant, your child will do a number of practical and interactive tasks.
Your child can answer questions verbally or by pointing or moving objects. The assessment has been designed to be inclusive and there are modified materials available – this means it is also accessible to children with special educational needs or disability (SEND) or English as an additional language (EAL). The teacher may pause the assessment at any time, for example, if a child needs a break.
What the assessment measures
The tasks are carefully designed to assess early mathematics, literacy, communication and language skills.
What you need to do
You do not need to do anything. Your child is unlikely to even know that they are doing an assessment when they are completing the tasks.
Why the assessment is being introduced
The assessment provides a better starting point to measure the progress a school makes with their pupils throughout their whole time at primary school, between reception and Year 6.
Parents will be able to see how well the school is supporting its pupils. It will also help teachers get to know their new class when they start school.
How the data will be used?
Children will not ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ the assessment; it will provide a snapshot of where they are when they start school in the reception year. The results of the assessment will not be used by government to track or label individual pupils, or to judge the performance of early years’ settings.
The data from the assessment will only be used at school level to measure the progress of the year group from reception to year 6. The data from the assessment, including numerical scores, will not be shared with parents, pupils, teachers, or external bodies, including schools. There will be no published score.
The RBA privacy notices explain what personal data is collected and how this is processed, including your child’s data.
What will be reported to you
We will receive narrative statements on how your child did, which will tell them how your child performed in the assessment. Schools are not obliged to report the narrative statements to you as a matter of course. However, schools must share the narrative statements with you upon your request..
Other Great Resources For Reception Parents and Children
There are lots and lots of great websites that can help you with everything from practicing your timetables to your half term research projects. Here are some that we think are the best.
Reading and Spelling - We use the Ruth Miskin Read, Write Inc scheme of work to teach reading. You can find out more about it here. You can also click here to learn more about your child's developing reader skills and if you'd like to find out more about spelling as part of the national curriculum, then please click here
Handwriting - You can click here to see how our children start to form letters and we how we teach handwriting in Year 2. Each letter has a rhyme that goes with it and you can see them here. We use the Nelson handwriting scheme of work and you can find out more about it here
Maths - For a wealth of fun Maths games, take a look at the Nrich maths website here. You can also try Maths Is Fun
ICT Games - To practice lots of different Literacy and Maths skills, you could try ICT Games
Topics - If you want to find out more about your topic - whether it's Geography, History or Science, two great resources are BBC Bitesize and Books For Topics
National Curriculum Guidance And Expectations
To find more about the Primary National Curriculum, you can download Government information here and to dig into further detail by subject, please click here
Where should your child be at the end of Reception? According to national age related expectations, your child should
In Reading
- Read some common irregular words
- Use phonic knowledge to decide regular words & read aloud accurately
- Identify rhymes and alliteration
- Join in with rhyming patterns
- Read & understand simple sentences
- Demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read
- Make basic predictions
- Identify start and end of a sentence.
In Writing
- Write simple sentences which can be read by themselves & others
- Use capital letters and full stops to demarcate sentences.
- Write demarcated sentences
- Use correct pencil grip
- Write name (correct upper & lower case)
- Use correct letter formation for familiar words
In Maths
- Count reliably to 20.
- Order numbers 1 – 20.
- Say 1 more/1 less to 20.
- Add & subtract two single digit numbers.
- Count on/back to find the answer
