Welcome to Reception

At St Paul’s Reception aim to give the children access to a broad and balanced curriculum that gives them the range of knowledge and skills needed for good progress through school and life. We provide quality and consistency in teaching and learning so that every child makes good progress and no child is left behind. Developing a close working partnership between staff and parents/carers is important to us. We believe that every child should be included and supported through equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice.

We have developed our classrooms in to fun and inviting environments where the children will want to learn and will be engaged and challenged by things that interest them. Giving the children ownership and allowing them to challenge themselves leads to them developing their confidence in their learning.

In Reception, we aim to balance adult led and child-initiated learning, find an example timetable of a typical week. You will notice that adult-led sessions are at the beginning and end of the morning and afternoon, to allow children time to be fully immersed in their play and to not have their thought processes interrupted mid-flow. This allows for higher order thinking and gives the adults opportunities to teach by responding to and extending the children’s learning.

In Reception we foster children to develop Characteristics of Effective Learning (see below), which are the skills and attitudes which will allow the children to go through life with the resilience and skills to tackle challenges and will prepare them to adapt to a future which we cannot predict.

We have an ethos where children are leaders of their learning through play, meaning that the ‘play and learn time’ is very personalised and relevant to the children in the class. It is amazing how much different learning can be happening in a classroom at one time. Click the button below for a list of questions that you might like to use to prompt conversation with your child at the end of the day to find out about their learning.