Big Acorns
Joining our Reception Class (Big Acorns) September 2023
Hello and Welcome to Big Acorns (Reception Class at St John's)
We are really excited to welcome all our Big Acorn children to our school and are very much looking forward to beginning their Big Acorns learning journey with you.
Staffing in Big Acorns:
The children are taught by the class teachers - Mrs Claire Webber and Mrs Helen Hewson
The teaching assistants - Mrs Sally Bridgeman and Mrs Sue West support the children in their learning, alongside the staff from Little Acorns.
In Big Acorns, we continue to follow the curriculum for the Early Years Foundation Stage, building on the children's learning and developments in settings they attended before they started school.
The children continue to deepen their understanding of early reading and early mathematics through our Power Maths and Read Write Inc schemes of learning. We also enjoy learning about the world around us, how to move our bodies in different ways, music, dance and singing and the religions of the world.
The Early Years curriculum has 7 strands and your child will be taught and assessed against these strands during their time in Big Acorns with a final Early Years profile being made in June 2024.
The strands are:
Physical Development
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Communication and Language
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design
All 7 areas of learning are used to plan children’s learning and activities. The professionals teaching and supporting your child will make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. This is a little bit like the curriculum in the rest of the school but it’s suitable for very young children, and it’s designed to be really flexible so that staff can follow your child’s unique needs and interests.
In our EYFS Class, our learning primarily follows the interests of the children – stories and the interests of the children act as our main topic leads. We develop skeleton topic plans throughout the year. We use this topic plan as and when it is appropriate to the current cohort (for example, at the start of the year/term). This topic plan is devised with several key elements in mind: seasonality, events that are significant to the children personally, culturally and globally as well as making the most of the local area and opportunities arising within it.
Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning in the EYFS
The emphasis on how children learn has huge potential to transform early years practice and empower children as confident, creative lifelong learners. Research demonstrates these characteristics can be supported or hampered by the experiences children encounter. In the best EYFS provision, children are encouraged to follow their interests, make independent choices about their learning and are supported to develop their thinking skills through skilful adult interactions.
Laying the Foundations of Future Learning
We understand the importance for the learning within the EYFS to take into consideration the interests and needs of the children. However, we also strongly believe that it is important to ‘lay the foundations’ of future learning within the wider Curriculum at St John's so we have carefully considered learning points throughout the year. These cohesive, sequenced ‘laying the foundations’ plans go hand in hand with the interests of pupils to create a topic plan
Your child's Tapestry online learning journey will be accessible to you as a parent throughout their time in Big Acorns and we encourage you to log on and look at this regularly to see your child's learning. Please speak to Mrs Webber if you need support with this.
We love to see what your child is up to at home, so if you wish to add your own comments or observations to your child's learning journey then please do so. You can also take a WOW sheet from our parent notice board to record any wow moments at home.
Messages and stories will also be added to our Class Dojo page, so please ensure that you have logged into your child's account to view important reminders and snapshots of learning that happens in Big Acorns. Again, please see Mrs Webber if you need support with this.
Below are copies of our Long Term plan for the year ahead, so you can see the areas of learning for your child and you will also be provided with paper copies of these.
We operate a very open door policy (COVID guidance followed!), so please just don't hesitate to speak to a member of the EYFS staff if you have any questions, queries or concerns and we will try to answer them.
We really look forward to sharing your child's exciting school adventure with you and can't wait to share all their brilliant learning moments with you.
Thank you for sharing them with us!
Kind regards
Claire Webber