Teacher Rachel Saunders
Teaching Assistant Bridget Dennett & Amelia Lukins
If parents have any queries and would like to get in touch with me, please do so via Class Dojo or my school email, or I can be reached via the School Office.
Acorn Class have PE on Tuesday and Wednesday, please come to school wearing PE kit on these days.
Things you could do at home to help your child’s phonic knowledge and number skills
Reception children have sheets sent home on Fridays to enhance their learning of sounds at home. They can colour, paint or collage the pictures and practise writing the letters. It is important that the children can recognise words that contain these letters. A good activity is using magazines, catalogues and cereal boxes, and finding the individual sounds.
There is some useful information on this webpage about phonics and the particular scheme that we use, Essential Letters and Sounds, including grapheme information sheets and how the sounds should be pronounced. The grapheme sheets may be useful if your child is writing at home.
Here are two videos to guide you on the pronunciation of Phase 2 and Phase 3 sounds.
Ask your child to regularly write their name and a caption when they have done a picture at home. Encourage children to make menus, shopping lists, instructions and recounts.
Play ‘I spy’ focussing on words that begin with the phonemes (sounds) they are learning or play ‘Treasure Hunt’ – children can earn a point for each object they bring to you or show you beginning with a specific letter! Have fun.
Count from 1- 20. Try not to miss out some of the tricky ‘teen’ numbers! Look for numbers in the environment and add or subtract using the environment around you.
Watch an episode of ‘Alphablocks’ on the cbeebies channel or on the website.
Ideas for talking about books with your child
As your child gets older you tend to ‘hear’ them read less and less because they become more fluent. However, it is important that the children continue to develop their comprehension and reasoning skills, through talking about the books they are reading. These discussions will count towards your child’s reading reward too, so please note them in their Home Link Book too.
Here are some ideas to help:
Fiction
1) After they have read a book, ask them to find their favourite part
2) Ask the children about their favourite character in the book. Then ask them if they have read any other books with similar characters? Or ask them if they know characters from other books that are completely different.
Non-fiction
We use the Letters and Sounds programme for phonics which involves learning actions alongside the sounds. This helps the children remember their sounds more effectively. For more information, please visit
www.letters-and-sounds.com/what-is-letters-and-sounds
Phonics video and website
Please click here for information on how to say the sounds