Panda (Year R)
Welcome to Panda Class!
Welcome to Panda Class
Panda Class is always full of practical learning, which mostly takes part in our play based activities. Our adults will be extending our thinking skills whilst we are playing, by asking questions and using a wide range of appropriate vocabulary in what we do. The children have access to both indoor and outdoor learning environments, to suit all learning styles. We hope you find our Tapestry pages useful, so that you can see the range of learning that is going on in Early Years. Always make time to talk to the children about their day - hopefully the photos on Tapestry will prompt them! You can share any photos with us via this learning platform, too.
In our fi
rst term of school we will be focusing on the main topic area of All About Me. This will give the children chance to talk about themselves and their own families, as well as learning about their new friends in class. We will spend lots of time settling the children into their school routine, and also introduce the zones of regulation to them, in which they will learn about understanding, managing and regulating their feelings. During the first term of school, we will look at a variety of books linked to the are
as of families and feelings, such as The Colour Monster and We're Going on a Bear Hunt. The indoor role-play area is set up as a home corner to help enrich the family based learning. We will be covering lots of other skills linked to these topic areas and our books - you will see lots of links on our class Tapestry pages for further information.
In R
eligious Education, the children will be finding out about Which People are Special and Why? This will start with links to ourselves, our families, and then the wider community, before starting to learn about why Jesus is special to people of the Christian faith, before finding out about why Guru Nanak is special to people of the Sikh faith.
We also take part in Jigsaw learning, which covers the Personal, Social, Health and Relationships Education. This 
term our focus is Being Me, and the children will be thinking about what makes them unique, and how we can celebrate our differences. The children have enjoyed meeting Jigsaw Jerry Cat and Jigsaw Jeni, and have also been learning about developing mindfulness after our sessions.
Other information can be found in our Class Newsletter, and you will see plenty of updates via the Tapestry platform to help support learning through play at home.
Phonics and reading
We take part in reading sessions 3x week in small reading groups. We focus on decoding, prosody and comprehension, which you can find useful prompts about in the Little Wandle books to help join in with these skills at home. We bring home a new book every Tuesday - some will be unworded to begin with. We are looking forward to sharing our skills with our family, but please remember reading is a shared experience for our young children! And please....always take time to share the Reading for Pleasure book with your child - they choose these on a weekly basis, and will enjoy a wide range of enriching texts through sharing these books with yourselves and wider family at home.
Some top tips...
The word phoneme means the smallest unit of sound, for example, cat has 3 phonemes, c - a - t.
The word grapheme means the letter shape.
The word segment means breaking the word down into the phonemes, for example, by saying "c.....a.....t".
The word blending means being able to put the phonemes together to say a word.
Some sounds are voiced and some are unvoiced. Watch the video below to help with your pronunciation of the phonemes:
Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1 - YouTube
Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 2 - YouTube
The children will bring home weekly Little Wandle phonics sheets so you can fully support them in this area of learning, showing you the words we have learnt in class using our phonics (decodable words), as well as a selection of tricky words which cannot be decoded.
Maths
In EYFS, 
we use resources from our main scheme of Mastering Number, and we also use some of the White Rose maths activities in our enhancements. In the autumn term we place a huge emphasis on the meaning and composition of numbers, and we focus on the numbers from 0 to 5 to fully embed them. The children will be learning about numbers through counting songs and lots of practical activities, which happen as part of daily routine and play based learning, as well as in specific maths learning sessions. You will see that we share weekly maths learning on our Tapestry platform, so you get to know the exact process and content of what is being taught in class. We often use Number Blocks to enhance the children's learning - feel free to use the videos from Series 1 on BBC iPlayer: BBC iPlayer - Numberblocks
Useful information:
PE will be on Friday for Term 1, then on Monday in Term 2 - children to come in wearing PE kit please. No earrings to be worn.
Forest School inspired learning dates will be shared via Tapestry once the children have settled in school routine.
Remember the children need a water bottle everyday please.
Free fresh fruit is provided, but you can send in your own fruit for your child if they prefer. Please let us know.
Make sure all clothing is named - this is essential in Panda class as jumpers all look the same!
Always provide a spare set of clothes and plastic bag in school bags, in case of any accidents during the day.
Please let members of staff know if there is a change of adult picking up either at drop off by the gate, through Tapestry, or by contacting the main office if it is a change that arises during the day, as we may not read this in time on Tapestry.
Lastly...please remember we are a NUT-FREE school. This includes peanut butter and Nutella type sandwich spreads, along with nuts in any bars at lunch time. Thank you.