Diamond Class

Welcome to Diamond Class.

I am Mrs Fearby, your child's Reception teacher and I am also the Early Years Lead, your children will also be supported by Miss Ashcroft, Mrs Atkinson and Mrs Finlay throughout the week.

We are a happy Hetton family!

Remember to follow the links below to watch the parent videos to support your child in reading at home, using Read, Write, Inc. These are different to the Virtual Classroom videos that you will receive each week with your child's specifically taught sounds. Please let know if you have any questions.

Happy watching! Mrs Fearby

What is Read, Write, Inc Phonics?

Understanding Phonics.

Listening to your child read.

Why read to your child.

How to say the sounds.

The Sound Frieze

Transition Week

Last week, Reception spent three days in Year 1 with their new teacher, Mrs Morris. We had lots of fun and did lots of different activities but my favourite activities were exploring all of our new core texts and getting the opportunity to read lots. We read The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch and decided for our lunch we would make jam sandwiches and biscuits. See the photos below. They were delicious! Mrs Morris was very impressed with how well we settled in to Year 1 - she is looking forward to September.

Our Medium Term Plan for Summer 2: Let's Think Big!

Reception Medium Term Plan: Lets Think Big!

Week Beginning 10th June…More Pirates, Cricket, writing number sentences, using Rekenreks, and most importantly….Play!

International day of play: Early Years doing what they do best!

The Pirates take over! Pirate Thursday. Pirate costumes, crafts, dances, tattoos, face paint, walking the plank and pop up pirates!

Literacy: Learning actions to support the story of The Night Pirates and drawing our own story maps. We are getting really good at knowing the story off by heart.

That’s Cricket! Reception practising their foundation cricket skills.

Here Comes the Summer...and The Night Pirates...Shiver me Timbers!

Our last half term in Reception: week beginning 3rd June 2024

Literacy: The Night Pirates have arrived and left us some treasure! Instructions for yummy pirate biscuits. We also had a pirate ship to build and decorate.

Drawing ourselves as Pirates and writing about what we would say. ''Ar! Dig for that treasure!''

PSCHE: I’ve got a body, a very busy body!

RE: Sharing Special Stories

Maths: Sharing Fairly, and Mastering Number - counting accurately.

Week beginning 20th May 2024

Here come the Very…Hungry…Caterpillars!

World Bee Day 20th May 2024: Playdough, drawing, writing, building homes...Save the Bees!

Our visit to Butterfly World: exploring the park, Caterpillars, Chrysalis’s, Butterflies, Meerkats, Spiders and lots of information, the children had an amazing day!

Week beginning 13th May 2024

PSCHE: I can use ‘Calm Me’ time to manage my feelings. Drawing in response to calm music, and learning strategies to help support me to manage my feelings.

The Wonderful World of Worms! Digging for worms for our new wormery, stamping on the ground to get our worms to come to the surface!

Brush your teeth, burnish your teeth, give them all a treat! Starting our tooth brushing project.

Primary PE: Football Fundamentals. Stopping the ball with the sole of our foot, Dribbling, and Striking with the Paw Patrol!

Literacy: Writing instructions about How to Plant a Seed. Fantastic independent writing!

Mastering Number: Using the Rekenreks and fast fingers to show ‘5 and a bit!’

Child initiated play: practising our skills in our own time. Painting outdoors, digging, independent drawing and labelling, showing things we have brought into school, being proud of our friends for their achievements, and making beanstalks!

Week beginning 6th May 2024

Not-so Tiny Seeds, Mastering our numbers within 10, Very Hungry Caterpillars, practising our skills, reflecting on the year, bible stories and making up with our friends. Growing and learning together.

Welcoming our new class members: Very Hungry Caterpillars!

Gaining confidence and skill through play...model making, developing our gross motor skills, drawing, dominoes, digging, role play and planting, all in a weeks’ work!

Reflecting on our learning across the year: looking through our class floor book and writing what we remember.

Practising our fine motor skills, building shapes with straws and balls.

Digging for Dinosaurs...Understanding how we find out about the past.

Understanding the World: Learning about the parts of a Flower and looking after our plants.

Outdoor Learning: Practising our Skills on our new equipment. Trip to Disneyland, anyone?

RE: Features of a Church. Learning about Bible Stories, Stained Glass Windows and making our own.

Mastering Number: Showing 5 and a bit!

PSCHE: Make friends, make friends, never ever break friends...the impact of our words - role playing falling out with our friends, and how to make up when we do.

Week beginning 29th April 2024

Growing, Counting, Shapes, floating and sinking and dribbling!
Another busy week for Reception.

Watch us grow in Reception this week!
In Literacy we have been continuing with our story of The Tiny Seed, writing about our plants we are growing, and captions about our favourite part of the story. We have done some fantastic work using our Fred Fingers to segment words for spelling!

We have become true mathematicians in Reception. This week we showed off our knowledge of 2D shapes by spotting the odd ones out, talking about the features of shape, and then using familiar shapes to copy and create pictures. We have also really developed our skills of grouping, counting in 2’s, recording numbers and counting in our counting collections session on a Friday morning, we are skilled at subitising and finding numerals to match amounts on number lines and tracks….amazing!

In PE we are using our brand new PE scheme to learn about Football Fundamentals, we dribbled the ball between cones (NOT using our toes, no,no,no!) then we tried to hide the ball from the ball thief using our bodies. Lots of fun and new skills learned, fantastic skill progression even in the lesson, we have gained lots of control now!

In RE we continued with learning about which places are special and why, we looked at different churches and drew the features we could see, such as graves and stained glass windows. We learned a lot of new vocabulary and we are starting remember that different faiths have a different name for their God, and read different books.

In Computing, we are using the Purple Mash scheme of work, and we are learning how to build the perfect boat. This week we experimented with floating and sinking to see which materials are best to use, next week we are going to design our boats, we decided plastic and wood were the materials that floated best.

Literacy: Keeping track of our plants and writing about our focus story The Tiny Seed.

RE: Which places are special and why? What are churches like? Drawing what we can see in a church and talking about why they are special to Christians.

Maths: Counting our Collections. Now we are grouping, skip counting and subitising as well as recording the numbers! Wow!

Computing: Building a Boat - Exploring the best materials that float before we plan how to build our boat.

Maths: Identifying the odd shape out, and making pictures with shapes we know.

Our new PE scheme Primary PE: Football Fundamentals. Dribbling, Striking and Balancing over a ball. So much fun!

Week beginning 22nd April 2024

Meeting the Dental Team ready for our big tooth brushing project!

Oliver’s Vegetables: Vegetable tasting just like Oliver in the story, some we liked, some we didn’t!

Understanding the World: Checking on our Plants, drawing a dandelion clock in Art, and looking for signs of Spring.

Understanding the World: A Sense of Place

Maths: Correcting and creating our own number lines in Mastering Number, recapping on Positional Language, and working out the rule for a 3-unit pattern!

RE: Special Places. PSCHE: I know how to make friends to stop myself feeling lonely.

Week beginning 15th April 2024

Planting, Climbing, Counting and Writing…growing from Tiny Seeds.

A busy first week back for our Reception children!

Maths: we have been continuing our Counting Collections journey by exploring grouping our collections, skip counting to make it faster to count, then matching the amount to the numerals on the number track and number lines. We have also been recording our learning on part whole diagrams and ten frames. In Mastering Number we learned the song ‘Ten Sizzling Sausages’ to help us work out numbers to 10, and we used our fingers to work out, when some of our ten sausages are burned, how many do we have left?

Literacy was an exciting part of our week this week. We were introduced to our new focus story The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, and we looked at different types of seeds, and planted our own. We learned about what a plant needs to grow, and drew and wrote about it. We are excited about looking after our seeds and helping them to grow!

In RE we finished our learning about the story of Easter. We learned more about Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, and why the cross is such an important symbol to Christians. We also learned about the El Salvador Cross and created our own, using symbols that are important to us.

In PSCHE, we started our new topic, and we learned about what a family is, different types of families and the jobs we do in our family. We had lots of good ideas, including playing with our brothers and sisters, and stroking our pets. Some of us said we tidied our room, but some of us only had the job of playing and watching TV!

Mrs Atkinson very kindly went on a mission over the Easter Holidays and found us an amazing climbing tower complete with a pulley, a drawing screen and ladder to use, and Mr Wright built up our brand new climbing frame. We are having so much fun pushing ourselves to the limit climbing and hanging, learning so many skills!

Another fun filled week, watch this space next week to see what we get up to.

Mrs Fearby and the Early Years Team