This week
It has been another good week and the children who have stayed all day have managed well in the afternoons. I am sure you have noticed how tired they are by Friday though!
Over this week, we have been carrying out “baseline assessments” to supplement the information we had passed on to us from pre-school settings about the children’s starting points for Reception. These involve the child working one to one with an adult completing various tasks, focussing on motor skills, number and pre-reading and writing skills. This gives us a good indication of where we should target the learning and if any children need particular skills support.
Observations
At the start of the year, we put lots of photos of the children enjoying themselves and becoming familiar with each other and the tasks in the classroom, so that you can see that they are happy and engaged. We will now start to add observations that are more based on the learning we are looking for and you will notice that we tag certain assessments as we add photos and text. At the end of the year, we have to complete a Foundation Stage Profile for each child so we need a range of observations in certain elements. You can also add to this at anytime by adding observations of home learning to the Tapestry journal. From now on, we try to add at least one learning observation per child each week. To evidence that learning is embedded , the children have to demonstrate it during their independent learning time, so you will see that most of the observations come from the child led learning parts of the day. All the observations are able to be viewed by parents. I often work in the evenings so if you don’t want to be disturbed by emails, you can turn your Tapestry notifications off and just see new learning when you choose to access it. For adult led sessions (in maths and phonics), we often record the learning in different ways, e.g. by worksheets, in learning books, by record sheets and notes. Please feel free to ask at any point if you want any more clarification of how we teach and asses during Reception year.
Parents evening
We would usually hold a parents information evening in October for parents of Reception children to explain what we are doing in the classroom and how you can best support your child’s learning at home. We are trying to adapt this to offer some sort of online presentation and I will let you know how to access this in the next couple of weeks.
Teddies
Thank you so much for all the pictures of the children with their teddies. I have passed them all to the PTA.
Next week
ALL CHILDREN WITH OR WITHOUT SIBLINGS MAY COME IN AT THEIR HOUSE TIME IN THE MORNING:
St Anthony (Green) 8.40am
St Christopher (Red) 8.45am
St Francis (Blue) 8.50am
St Nicholas (Yellow) 8.55am
Pick up at the end of the day will remain the same as this week. Siblings with house groups times and non-siblings at 3.15.
Please don’t hesitate to email me with any questions or queries ag@stjohnsprimary.org
Alice Greening
