🌟 Welcome to Reception at Gorefield Primary Academy! 🌟

Where curiosity grows, confidence blooms and every child shines.

🧒 About Our Reception Class

Our Reception classroom is a vibrant, nurturing environment where children begin their exciting journey through school. Rooted in the principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), we believe that every child is unique, capable, and ready to explore the world around them.

At Gorefield Primary Academy we provide a safe, stimulating, and joyful space where children can learn through purposeful play, develop strong relationships, and build the foundations for lifelong learning.

🌈 Our EYFS Ethos

We are proud to follow the EYFS framework, which places the child at the heart of all learning. Our approach is guided by the four core EYFS principles:

🌱 A Unique Child

We value each child as an individual. Our learning is tailored to meet their interests, needs, and stages of development. We celebrate diversity and foster independence, resilience, and confidence.

👨‍👩‍👧 Positive Relationships

We build strong relationships with our children and families. Our team works in partnership with parents and carers, recognising that early learning starts at home. We create a warm and inclusive atmosphere where every child feels respected and heard.

🏡 Enabling Environments

Our indoor and outdoor learning spaces are carefully designed to inspire curiosity, imagination, and exploration. From large scale construction and storytelling corners to role play and planting areas, children have the freedom to follow their interests and make choices in their learning.

📚 Learning and Development

Through a balance of child-initiated and adult-led activities, children develop across the seven areas of learning, including communication, physical development, literacy, maths, and expressive arts. We believe that play is the most powerful tool for learning in the early years.

📖Drawing Club

Drawing Club in EYFS is a creative and highly engaging approach to developing children’s early literacy, oracy, creativity and fine motor skills, all through the power of storytelling and drawing.

At Gorefield Primary Academy we are excited to offer Drawing Club as a magical and enriching part of our Reception classroom experience. It is a powerful way to develop a love of storytelling, vocabulary, and mark-making, through fun and creativity.

🌈 What is Drawing Club?

Drawing Club is a daily storytelling adventure where children:

• 📖 Explore a rich and engaging text or story (classic tales, picture books, traditional stories, or film clips)

• 🧠 Learn and use new, ambitious vocabulary in a playful context

• ✏️ Create drawings based on story settings, characters, or events

• 💬 Invent their own plot twists, heroes, villains, and magical powers

• 🖋 Add symbols, letters, words and then sentences to bring their ideas to life

Children are invited into the world of the story using exciting "secret codes", treasure maps, potions, or missions.

🧒Why We Love Drawing Club in Reception:

• Develops Early Writing: Children gain confidence in making marks and using phonics for a purpose.

• Grows Vocabulary: They learn new words in context and use them in their own storytelling.

• Boosts Creativity: It fosters imaginative thinking and original ideas.

• Supports Oracy: Children talk about their drawings, share their ideas, and build storytelling language.

• Encourages Focus and Joy: The storytelling "hook" keeps children engaged and excited to learn.

🔢 NCETM Maths in Reception

Laying strong foundations for mathematical thinking, confidence, and enjoyment.

At Gorefield Primary Academy, we follow the NCETM's Mastering Number programme in Reception to give children the very best start in their mathematical journey. This approach focuses on helping all children develop a deep understanding of number, not just how to count or recite numbers.

🎯 What is NCETM Maths?

In Reception, this looks like:

• A daily short maths session (10–15 minutes) focused on Number Sense

• Hands-on, visual, and practical learning

• Carefully chosen representations (e.g. ten frames, fingers, rekenreks, part–part–whole models)

• A focus on subitising (recognising amounts without counting), comparing, and understanding how numbers are composed and related

🧠 Key Aims in Reception

Through the Mastering Number programme, we help children:

• Understand numbers up to 10 deeply

• Recognise and compare numbers using different visual representations

• Subitise small groups of objects (e.g. instantly see 3 dots without counting)

• Explore number bonds and patterns (e.g. 3 + 2 = 5 and 5 = 4 + 1)

• Develop fluency, reasoning, and mathematical talk

🧒 What Does It Look Like in the Classroom?

Children will take part in:

• ✋ Finger patterns and counting rhymes

• 🟦 Using objects, five frames, and ten frames to build numbers

• 🧩 Comparing numbers and quantities (more, less, equal)

• 🔄 Talking about number patterns and solving simple problems

• 🎲 Fun games and repetition to build fluency and confidence

These activities are short, engaging, and carefully designed to build understanding step by step.

🔡 Little Wandle Phonics in Reception

Building confident readers, one sound at a time.

At Gorefield Primary Academy we follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme – a systematic, synthetic phonics scheme. This approach gives children the essential skills to become fluent, enthusiastic readers and writers from the very start of their school journey.

🧠 What is Phonics?

Phonics teaches children how to recognise the sounds (phonemes) in spoken words and link them to the letters (graphemes) that represent them. This helps children to:

• Read by blending sounds together (e.g. c-a-t = cat)

• Spell by segmenting words into sounds (e.g. dog = d-o-g)

• Build a strong foundation for reading comprehension and writing

✏️ Why Little Wandle?

Little Wandle is based on the original Letters and Sounds framework but is fully updated with:

• A clear progression of sounds and skills across the year

• Daily, consistent teaching routines

• Catch-up sessions for any children who need extra support

• Fully matched decodable reading books

• Regular assessment to ensure every child keeps up

📅 What Phonics Looks Like in Reception

Children take part in a daily phonics session, learning to:

• Say each sound correctly

• Match sounds to letters

• Blend sounds to read simple words

• Read and spell tricky words (words that can’t be sounded out, like the or said)

• Apply their phonics skills in reading and writing

📚 Reading Practice Sessions

In addition to daily phonics, children have three weekly reading practice sessions in small groups. These sessions focus on:

1. Decoding – sounding out and blending to read the words

2. Prosody – reading with expression

3. Comprehension – understanding and talking about what they’ve read

Each child reads a fully decodable Little Wandle book, matched precisely to the phonics they know — so they feel successful and confident.

🏡 Reading at Home

We know that daily reading at home makes a big difference! Each week, your child will be sent:

• 📖 A Little Wandle eBook matched to their current phonics level (to practise fluency)

• 🐻 A sharing book to enjoy together (read to your child, for language and pleasure)

🧒 Support for Every Child

Some children may need a little extra help to keep up. We offer:

• Daily keep-up sessions to revisit key sounds

• Additional practice in small groups

• Regular assessment to identify gaps early

📅 A Typical Day in Reception

Every day in our classroom is an adventure! Here's what you might see:

• 🧩 Early bird tasks

• ✏️ Phonics

• 📖 Drawing Club

• 🔢 Interactive maths learning

• 🌍 Exploration time

• 🎨 Creative arts 

• 🤝 Circle time and social learning

• 🌿 Outdoor discovery and woodland activities

Our routines provide structure while allowing flexibility to respond to each child’s curiosity and needs.

🤝 Working with Families

We know that learning doesn’t stop at the school gate. That’s why we value open communication with parents and carers. Through regular updates, observations and shared learning goals, we ensure every child gets the support they need to thrive.

We also offer:

• 📱 Online snippets of learning through Class Dojo.

• 🏡 Home learning- Numbots and independent reading.

• ☕ 'Make and Take' sessions and parent workshops

• 📆 Termly meetings and half termly progress reports

“In Reception, we lay the foundations for a love of learning. We encourage children to be independent, resilient learners and be curious about the world around themselves. We are ready to take on the world one discovery at a time!”
– Mrs Davies, Reception Teacher