New Reception Class Information
A warm welcome to Reception at St John's!
Mrs K Campbell, EYFS and KS1 Leader Mrs K Dabrowska, EYFS Teaching Assistant
and Reception Class Teacher
At St John's we aim to educate and nurture the whole child, with a strong focus on our core Christian values, which underpin the holistic nature of the Curriculum in the Early Years. Our safe, yet stimulating learning environment provides your child with the opportunity to gain strong foundation knowledge and skills necessary to reach their full potential as they progress through their education.
When your child begins their journey in Reception, we welcome you, their families, to join our community and actively get involved. We strongly believe that your child’s success at school will depend on the strength of the partnership we have with you.
In Reception we put the child at the centre of everything we do. We consider the whole child, which includes their physical needs, their social and emotional wellbeing, their health and their learning. We know that your child is wonderfully unique and developing in their own way. We strongly believe all children, no matter where they are on their journey, can be confident, resilient and capable of learning with the range of diverse opportunities for interaction, play and learning that we provide here.
We know that children learn best in a warm and loving space, where they feel a sense of belonging. This is why we take the time to get to know your child well and focus on building a relationship of trust and respect.
Our environment offers stimulating resources and spaces, inside and outside which are relevant to your children and their interests. The rich opportunities in play will support your children in exploring, investigating and risk taking.
We prioritise time for play because we know it makes a powerful contribution to your child’s wellbeing, development and learning. The open-ended nature of play allows children to explore and experiment with confidence, take risks and challenge themselves without the fear of failure. In play, children can sustain deeper levels of engagement as they apply what they know and deepen their understanding as they master new skills through cooperation and creativity.
We teach children by ensuring they take part in challenging and playful daily adult led sessions, which cover the breadth of the seven areas of learning that make up the Early Years Curriculum.
We use the newly updated ‘Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage’. This contains the ‘Early Learning Goals’. These goals are statements for each area of learning, that reflect the expected level of development we want children to reach by the end of the Reception year. ‘Development Matters’ and ‘Birth to 5’ are the Curriculum guidance that we follow when implementing the ‘Statutory Framework’ and planning our learning.
Our Reception Curriculum is planned with exciting and relevant themes to engage the children and build upon their prior experiences and knowledge of the world around them. We use core texts to introduce these themes in a child friendly way and with an immersive approach, in order to bring the stories to life and ensure your children become familiar with the language and vocabulary within these quality texts.
As visits to see us have not been possible this year, please click on the link to download a copy of our visual Transition Booklet to share with you child over the summer.
We look forward to welcoming you to Reception in September.