What is your child being taught at reception?

[EllieNW3]

I would be interested to hear what your child is being taught at reception currently (reading/writing/spelling/maths)? Is the whole class being taught the same or is your child more advanced than others?

The reason why I am asking is that we are currenly living overseas (moving back to the UK this summer) and I think I made a bit of a mistake on choosing an IB school for my nearly five year old daughter. It's a long story but we didn't have much choice and the British curriculum school she was offered a place just didn't seem right and it had loads of negative reviews. When my daughter was at nursery (pre-reception) the teacher thought she was one of the most academically advanced so as my daughter was interested, she introduced her to blending words. Now at her current school the teacher has only just finished going through phonics, sorting words by starting letter and has only just introduced a spelling board for my daughter and she is supposed to be in the most advanced group. I am not as worried about maths, as she seems to know her shapes (3D as well as normal) and is confident with numbers, sorting etc etc.

As we are now moving back to the UK and we are looking for her to go to a British curriculum school I am panicking a bit. I have been teaching my daughter to read at home using the Oxford Read Write Inc (she is currently level 2) and I am focusing on the 45 high frequency words. Ideally, I wouldn't want to be doing as much teaching at home (as let's face it we would much rather be playing in the park) particularly as she already spends so much time at school. I have spoken to her teacher but I understand that they just aren't allocated enough time for teaching basic academic skills (there is a lot of focus on 'topics on inquiry'). Anyway, I could go on for ages. From my experience, whoever told me that there isn't much difference between the IB and British curriculum wasn't quite right (although I did know that IB might be a bit slower at the start, but didn't realise how massive the difference would be!).

Thank you for reading and I would really appreciate to hear your comments x

I don't have a word cupboard! should I ask for one

God forbid we let children have unfettered access to words, mrz. The only appropriate place is to keep them in a guarded word cupboard.

I'm so feckless when it comes to words I just scatter them to the four winds

I've been known to make interactive displays with words. Admittedly it sometimes ends up looking like they've been scattered to the four winds.

I guess it's a cupboard with some words in it.

He has lots of fun. He has been playing in the 'pet shop', making a superb mothers day card and tissue flower posy this week.
He is also loving reading and getting a new book in his bag

What is the point of a word cupboard though?

intheshed - thank you very much. That was very helpful. So I guess my DD isn't too far behind. Maths she seems fine (apart from number bonds to 10 which I can do at home) but it's reading and writing that her school is quite behind.

I will keep teaching her at home and when we decide on the school ask them where the other children are so can brush up her skills a bit more over summer (-:.

There will be a huge range of abilities

Thank you very much for your replies. I either have a delay in getting your messages or am too daft to keep up with them (I suspect the latter lol).

I will try not to worry about it all too much but I guess I can't really stop teaching my DD at home so that she won't have to play catch up in September.

DDs current school is great at 'topics'. They've done senses, watercycles, mini beasts and all sorts which is great (but I wish they would find a bit more time to teach reading/writing). They also spend a lot of time playing and doing arts and crafts, music and alike.

They are not really expected to do number bonds till yr1 but obviously if they are ready before then, they will learn them earlier.

Number bonds to 10 are: 8+2, 9+1, 5+5, 6+4 etc etc...

number bonds to 10

0+10=10
1+9=10
2+8=10
etc

TheSecondComing - I had to google it too. I understand number bonds being different ways of getting to 10 - ie 1+9=10 or 4+6=10. Interestingly, I have just bought one of those wipe clean books about them (as they were buy two get third free)

Ellie - you can buy a game called "shut the box" which is fab for number bonds. My DD loves it and plays it with her older brother.

Number bonds are addition and subtraction facts. For example the number bonds for 4 are 0+4, 1+3, 2+2, 3+1 and 4+0. They also need to know the associated subtraction facts e.g 4-1.

simpson - thank you for that (-:

In reception we teach doubles and one more and one less (instant recall)

My DD has been doing an awful lot of topic based learning (dinosaurs/space/keeping healthy) but her school does seem to be working quite slowly with reading, writing and maths. I'm doing a lot with her myself, but I'm not sure if the school has even started on vowel digraphs yet, and they don't do guided reading yet. They don't even seem to hear the children read individually very often.

So I think it will depend a lot on the school, OP. I'm in the same position as you in a way, I'm concerned with how slowly the school are working so I spend a lot of time teaching my DD at home. I try to make it fun and play based as much as possible, but it's still frustrating because I can think of other things to be doing with that time.

We don't do guided reading in any year group reception to Y6

Pozzled - I totally understand. I would so prefer to support what the school is doing and do some minor things here and there. At the moment, I feel that it is down to me to keep DD on top of things.

We would love to get DD to a very academic school (we currently have offers from two schools) so I would prefer her not to be totally behind if they happen to get a place for her.

DC4 is in reception, so I ought to have a good feeling for what avg is like; well, to be fair, other DC were above avg eventually, but at reception age I always thought they were very avg (and probably were).

DS can accurately
...read numbers up to 100.
...double 5 & smaller numbers.
...add one to a number under 20, but not take away one or +/- 2.
...remember phonics of alphabet letters.
...read Oxford RT books with a lot of support at 1a-2c level.
...sight read about 15 words (maybe 10 more he sometimes knows).
...form his letters quite well, copy down words.
...spell some cvc words.
...draw (copy) most anything he is shown.

I think his drawing+scribing is well above avg, his reading about avg, his math a bit below avg or maybe even worse.

Dd is in reception, they spent sept-oct doing pure letter sounds before given reading books at oct half term. They use ort and dd started on stage 2 although some started lower. She gets 2 books per week and is on stage 3 now. Her teacher advises that they like to get those on reception up to stage 4 by the end but obviously not all kids are the same. She has covered the sh, ch, we, oo, th sounds etc and is currently learning phase 3 words (me, my he, she, we etc) and phase 4 (they, all are, one, out).

In maths its been about one more and one less, recognising and ordering numbers to 20. They will start number bonds soon to 10.

I'd say your child is about the same as mine so wouldn't worry. There are kids in dds class who are not reading at all yet.

That's interesting,mrz. Do you do a lot of individual reading? TBH, I'm not so worried about the lack of guided reading, but what I do find annoying is the lack of real progression in phonics- something that I've learned a lot about from your posts!