Oak Class – Reception

Welcome to Oak Class! We are Reception children.

In Oak class, we create a nurturing and engaging environment where children are encouraged to explore, grow in confidence and develop into independent learners. Our indoor and outdoor spaces provide opportunities for children to learn through play, creativity and hands-on experiences.

Throughout the year, we explore a broad and diverse range of topics through the Early Years Curriculum, carefully planned around the children’s interests to ensure their learning is meaningful, engaging and enjoyable.

We’re looking forward to a year full of learning and discovery. We hope the information below gives you a flavour of what’s to come.

Please find below an overview of our learning for the 2026/27 academic year:

Oak’s Curriculum Overview for 26/27

This term we will be learning:

In English we use Drawing Club to spark our children’s imagination and immerse them into the joys of reading , exciting new vocabulary and story language Drawing club allows the children to use their imagination and develops both communication and language skills as well as pre writing phonics skills. This term some of our focus texts include The Pumpkin Thief , Stickman, Christopher Pumpkin, Percy the Park Keeper stories , Pumpkin Soup and Little Glow.

We will also explore making our own stories using Helicopter story telling. Children compose their own stories and we act them out as a class.

In Maths we continue to explore numbers 1-5 and a focus on counting to 20. We will focus on the composition of 3,4 and 5 and looking for ways to show this by dice patterns, numicon, fingers and tens frames . We will be using language of fewer than, more than and equal to when making comparisons and describing what we notice.

In the Wider Curriculum our focus is on celebrations and linking this to light and dark. We will explore different celebrations from Bonfire night, Remembrance Day, Diwali, Advent, Hanukkah and Christmas. We will also look at what celebrations look like in our own homes and how we prepare for them. With a focus on our natural world – night and day – we will learn about nocturnal animals and hibernation as we change from Autumn season into the Winter. We will also explore the changes that we see around us and these will form part of our activities outside. The connection of light across the celebrations will be explored and linked in with our text Little Glow.

In RE we will focus on celebrations including Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas as well as our core value this term of resilience. In PSHE we will be focusing on celebrating differences through the Jigsaw scheme of work.

PE lessons will be on Wednesday afternoon with Premier Coaches and throughout the week in short structured activities as well as opportunities for developing gross motor through play. Please send your child to school wearing their PE kit on Wednesday.

Children need to have in school every day a spare pair of shoes or wellies for our Adventure Play and Paddock area.
Your child also needs a full set of clothes including underwear in case they get wet or muddy.
It is important that children always have a coat in school as we will be outside as much as possible in all weathers.

Weekly Home Learning Tasks

Your child’s reading record and levelled scheme reading book needs to come into school every day.

Please ensure your child is:

Reading to an adult every day (note this in their reading record). Practise the new words in their reading book, read a few pages, play games with the new words or chat about the text.
Regularly spending 5 mins on the home learning phonics worksheets.
Listening to an adult read a book them. Take time to chat about the story, characters, whether they liked the story or how the story could change.
Completing a weekly Doodle Maths or Numbots activity.

Sometimes our home learning might include:

Occasional themed work linked to learning at school.

Doodle Maths

NumBots

Login information for all online resources has been stuck into the inside cover of your child’s reading record. (To be sent out Mid Term 2)

Reading, Spellings and Phonics

Reading

Children will bring home two reading books. One book will be fully decodable and chosen by an adult to increase fluency. This book will be sent home on Wednesdays and will need to be returned to school on Mondays. The book will be familiar as we will have read the book three times in school before going home.
They should be reading the book fluently, with 90% of the words being read without the need to segment. As a result of this increase in fluency, speed and accuracy, comprehension improves as cognitive overload is reduced.

The second book the children will bring home will be a ‘sharing book’. This will have an ‘s’ sticker on the front. This is a book chosen by your child to encourage a love of reading and can be changed at any time. This book will not be fully decodable, therefore this is a book you can read together.

Please ensure you sign the purple home-school contact book/reading record each time you read with your child.

Phonics

At the beginning of the term, we will send home a list of the phonemes covered each week in our phonics sessions. We will also send home a list of words containing these phonemes. Children can then practise reading these words at home.

Little Wandle Phonics Overview

Little Wandle Parent Guide