Where is your child's reception class at - what are they learning as a class at the moment?

[harveytherabbit]

Having discussed it with friends whose kids are at other schools, ds's class seems to be working much slower through things than others in the area.

Can anyone give me an indication of the sort of thing their children are learning in whole class sessions e.g. on the carpet phonics?

I know quite a few of the parents at our school are a bit about this.

The kids are all happy and some might argue that's the most important thing but it seems a bit odd.

do you know what? i have NO idea what they do at school! lol
um, i know they have been learning about 3d shapes because ds1 came home talking about spheres and cuboids.
we have a sounds activity book which we do each week, we have to draw pictures of things and write words beginning with the sounds they have learnt that week

not realy sure about whole class activities though. does it matter as long as they enjoy it and learn to read and write??

I can't tell you a huge deal but I can tell you what I know. DD1 is in a large state school primary, in a class of 29, and they are doing phonics every day (I think they are doing sh, th, ch, oo, ee, etc). They are also doing counting in 2s and 10s and subtraction addition 1 to 10. They do 1 guided reading session a week and they are listened to read once a week. My DD1 is on the ORT Songbirds level 2 but there is a huge range of abilities wrt reading and writing, varying from kids still on 10 words and barely writing their name to kids reading pretty fluently, I'd say DD1 probably somewhere in between. Topics-wise they are doing "pets" at the moment and they all had to write a piece on their own pet and the teachers have invited an exotic animal person to bring snakes, reptiles etc!! This is all I know but I hope it helped you a bit! x

Harvey what area are you in as this may dictate to what the schools policy is. Im in bedfordshire and I know that they take their time and are in no rush for them to progress their ethos is slowly be surely

They have just finished "space" week - rockets, planets, constellations etc
Now have linked that to day/night/ seasons/ months/days of week and time

Next is Travel - I think the plan is to link it to methods of travel, and talking about the different countries. They all made passports today

In between this they do phonics work and shapes/ simple maths/ group phonics and reading.

When I ask dd what she has been doing though she always says colouring and playing, on further discussion however, she tells me the above

.

Thanks so far.

I don't think it is an area thing Soyouthink (although we are in West London if it is) as some of the neighbouring schools are way ahead. Similar catchments, similar everything apart from the teaching style.

ooh actually, i did see on the board today that they'd been talking about "people who help us"

I don't know. I don't think at this age it really matters especially as the range of ability across the class is so varied depending mostly whether they are late or early birthdays. At this point I just want them to be happy. IMO they are all too young for school anyway.

DS's class have been doing addition and subtraction, shape, counting to 20 and beyond.

in Phonics they have just done ow as in cow and now doing oi as in coin.

Their topics are dinosaurs, easter and spring and they are doing the blue balloon in P.E.

We had parents evening on Monday and I asked why our DD is only on the first stage book whilst many of her friends are way ahead. I cited this as a concern to the teacher who said that they dont push, just wait for them to naturally progress. She just kept saying that this was the ethos of the school

If yours do Letters and Sounds which phase are they up to?

The Septemeber starter classes did a phonics lesson yesterday (I know as we have some observers in and I covered a lesson next door) and they were doing sh.

However, in the class there are children working much below this.

Think our school aims to have children on Phase 3 by end of reception.

Chinese new year as a project, it was the arctic before that, dinosaurs before that

and a 'white science' week in between

Read to teacher/ta 3 times a week

group counting to 20 and back, counting in 2s up to 10 (most of them can't do this I don't think)

lots of free play/cooking once a week/painting/exercise

just looked in DDs letters/sounds book and she has

v/zz/oo/ee/x letters to learn this week

me/my/we/be/you/was words to learn

Lots of painting and junk modelling here!

mii - that is Phase 3

This week DS's reception class has been making TROLLS.

I've been wondering if the teacher is an MNetter and been dying to post about this all week. Thank you for the opportunity!!

They're just finioshed their first reader that they did as a class.
They're learning to write some letters without tracing.
They're learning about 5 words a week from flashcards.
They're able to write numbers 1-5 without any hint as to shape.
They learned last week that electricity is dangerous and if you touch a wire you'll die and that sausages and chips will give you a fat tummy
They've gone up to 2/3 items of homework a night (eg: 1/2 pages of workbook, a page of reader and a sheet of words)

DD last week did the phonic sounds 'ear' 'er' 'air' (she gets 4 or 5 sounds a week home in a book on fridays that they have learnt that week and we redo them at home with her trying to remember words with the right sound and then they can draw/cut and stick pictures to match the word)

At school she says they are doing about methods of transport (making the playhouse in the classroom into a spaceship (the house is always converted into the theme!) (know last term was hsapes and patterns and people who help them)

Carpet time is phonic work/number work/ story, never hear much about number work (dd not interested in numbers and teacher said the same at parents evening monday!

She reads every other day to teacher/TA and book changes about 2/3 times a week (still on very basic words for dd1 as she gets the phonics but strugglings to merge all the phonic sounds together to make a proper word)

PE is 3 times a week (they only change once a week though)

The school is quite big (3 reception classes) so the reception class all link to a outside classroom with textures/sounds/water games (we have to leave wellies and waterproof apron at school) etc so they send small groups out there at least twice a day (they tend to let 5 children from each class out there for an hour in the morning and another 5 in the afternoon so 15 children from 3 classes) to do lessons using the materials (its got a big civer over it so they can out whatever the weather)

She has french once a week (loves that!)

Oh and 'busy book' when they have free time if they want to draw/write they have specific books, they can do whatever they like in them but they ask them to write one or two words to say what it is (for example dd likes doing houses) but they try and get the children to spell teh word themseleves using the phonics (although did laugh at parents evening as DD1 write heart as hut then decided wasnt right so added love!)

hahaha headless she is probably on here reading this now.

This is very useful indeed.

I do not understand how all but one or two in the class is on the first level books only.

There seems to be a huge lack of differentiation.

there are only two in dd's class that have the reading ability to get the higher level readers home... most of them are like dd and just memorise the reader, can't read it at all.

only 10 in her class though

Maybe it's not quite as odd as I think then?
There are 29 in the class. 1 or two on higher levels, 27 on the lowest level.

Middle class West London backgrounds where I' sure many of them will have known their letter sounds before they started (huge generalisation and judgement...)

DD is here beside me now
'errr errr umm (thinking,not phonemes!)topic? my topic is sewing, no not sewing materials.What's the last sound that I did? i did ng today ( she typed that 'ng' but pronounced it 'n'.Now I want a drink I want a drink, I want a drink,I want a drink, MUUUUUM!'
she has learned to count past 100 too and I think has been doing addition and subtraction on her fingers
They have 2 reading groups .One does red books and the other pink

Not sure about DD as she never tells me what she is doing. Getting her to school in the morning is our main challenge as she usually refuses to go.

But according to her reading diary she has to learn the following words, we have had these words for about 4 weeks!! then, there, they, go, into, back, no

She has reading books everyday, but doesn't like reading them everyday. The levels change, i think she is on level 2.

Although there is not much evidence of writing and she loves doing writing. Parents evening we were shown her writing book, she does this once a week and there were only about 8 pages (8 weeks worth of drawing with writing underneath)