Autumn Term

                                                     Welcome to Venus Class EYFS 

We would like to welcome you to Marston Thorold Primary School and to say how excited we are to welcome your child into our school community. Starting school is such a special time and we are pleased that we are your chosen school for your child to start their journey in education.

We understand that this may be anxious time for you. However, your child is about to begin a very exciting adventure and we are looking forward to getting to know all our families and welcome the children into our school family.

 What is EYFS? (Early Years Foundation Stage)

EYFS is split into four main principles: A unique Child, Enabling Environments, Positive Relationships, Learning and Development. These principles underpin the EYFS and are the foundations needed to enable a child to thrive and develop across each of the EYFS seven areas of learning.

Your child’s learning journey is divided into these seven areas.

The seven areas are;

Communication and Language

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Physical Development

Literacy

Math's

Understanding the World

Expressive Arts and Design

The 7 areas of learning are further divided into strands. Alongside these areas are also “The Characteristics Of Effective Learning”, which describe how you child learns best. The 3 Characteristics Of Effective Learning are;

• Playing and Exploring – Engagement - Finding out and exploring, playing with what they know and being willing to “have a go”.
• Active learning – Motivation – Being involved and concentrating, keep trying, enjoying achieving what they set out to do.
• Creating and Thinking Critically – Thinking – Having their own ideas, making links, choosing ways to do things.

Staff will refer to these areas of learning and characteristics when planning and preparing activities and when assessing and observing your child.

Baseline Assessment

The EYFS assessment is a type of assessment used when a child first starts school. We will observe your child during their few weeks of school  to establish their  current level of attainment and their next steps. Please read the document attached at the bottom of this page that gives a full explanation of this assessment. If you have any further questions then please do not hesitate to ask.  

What’s happening this term?

Our topic this term we will be “All About Me”. We will be doing lots of different activities that we help us all get to know each other. These activities are planned around the EYFS curriculum and support children’s learning in all areas.

We will be using “Little Wandle Letters and Sounds” for our Phonics lessons. Learning first letter sounds and we will be concentrating on recognising the sounds, producing the individual letter sounds correctly and how we form the letters alongside sounding and blending words. Children have a phonics book in school to help support their learning and will bring home sound and letter formation books to support their learning. Children will learn a new sound everyday Monday to Thursday and Friday will be used to consolidate that week’s learning. Please read the Phonics and Tricky word letter that is on our class page for a more detailed account of these lessons.

In Math's we will be focusing on these areas; Daily routines, Stories and number songs/Rhymes, Now and then, Systematic counting on and back, Matching, sorting and compare objects by amounts, size, mass and capacity and exploring and creating simple repeated patterns. These activities will be taught through a broad range of experiences; the classroom environment, resources, continuous provisions and collaborative planned tasks.

Autumn Term Newsletter