Latchmere School

Reception

Spring Term

We hope that you had a lovely Christmas break. Welcome to the spring term where we look forward to the continuing partnerships between home and school.

Attendance

As we begin the spring term, we would like to remind everyone about the importance of attendance. Many of the subjects we teach rely on carefully sequenced and linked lessons and a missed lesson can have a detrimental impact on children’s understanding and ability to ‘keep up’ over the year. If your child will be absent for any reason, please let us know and do speak with your teacher if you have attendance difficulties that you need support with.

Reading

Our goal is to create confident, fluent, independent readers. We prioritise reading at Latchmere School and have very carefully chosen the texts your child will study this term. We focus on word reading to develop fluency and encourage the whole class to join in through strategies such as choral reading (the whole class read together) and echo reading (the teacher models the reading and the class echo back). We also have the Latchmere Reading skills. In Reception these are based on decoding, prosody, comprehension and vocabulary.

In Reception, we will be focusing on ‘Six Dinner Sid’ as our Inside Out Story.

We will be continuing to embed the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds phonics programme. This involves daily teaching of phonics and three reading sessions per week for every child focussing on decoding, prosody and comprehension.

Please see the phonics page on the website for further information.

We start teaching the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds phonics programme on Monday 8th September. Initially this involves daily teaching of phonics and moves on to three reading sessions per week for every child focussing on decoding, prosody and comprehension.

Please see the separate phonics letter for further information. You can also look at the ‘Phonics and Reading Scheme’ page on the school website.

https://www.latchmereschool.org/web/phonics_and_reading_scheme/647029

Maths

Our curriculum is based on the NCETM Mastering Number and White Rose Maths programmes. These research-based initiatives ensure that the skills and concepts children are taught are fully embedded before moving on.

This half-term we will focus on:

-         Continue to develop subitising and counting skills and explore the composition of numbers within and beyond 5.

-         Ordinal numbers (first, second, etc).

-         Composing and decomposing numbers and investigating part–part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 5 can be made of 3 and 2.

-         Using the language of ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’ and ‘an equal number’ to describe how many objects there are in each set.

-         Begin to identify when two sets are equal or unequal and connect two equal groups to doubles.

-         Odd Numbers.

-         Composition of numbers to 10.

-         Length and Height.

-         3D Shapes and patterns.

Curriculum Highlights

This half-term, we will be learning about ‘People who help us’, ‘Chinese New Year’ and ‘Winter’.

You can find out more information about the spring 1 learning by looking at the Reception medium term plan on the website.

We hope you have found this information helpful. We aim to keep parents as involved and informed as possible. Please do not hesitate to ask your child’s teacher or other members of the Reception team if you have a question or just wish to have a chat about any of the above.

Best wishes and thank you for your support

The Reception Team

Miss Davison, Miss Khiytani and Miss Edwards

Key Dates

Phase 3 Phonics Workshop - Friday 16th January at 9am in the Drama Hall

Living Eggs in Reception - Monday 9th March to Friday 20th March

Bocketts Farm Trip - Thursday 5th March

Egg Decorating in Class - Wednesday 25th March

Foxes Assembly – 26th March 2026

Hedgehogs Assembly- 23rd April 2026

Owls Assembly - 30th April 2026


Updates and reminders

Morning routine

After the autumn term of “settling in”, this term we will be focusing on encouraging all Reception children to be as confident, independent and as “grown up” as they can possibly be.

Therefore, in support of this, wherever possible, we would please ask you to say “Goodbye” to your child at the door and encourage them to come in with their belongings by themselves. This will greatly enhance and develop your child’s self-confidence and independence.

Beginning and End of Day Arrangements

All children should arrive in school between 8.40am-8.50am ready for the start of the school day and be picked up at 3.20pm. Register and then phonics start at 8.50am.

Please remember to speak to the class teacher, email the school office or use the message book on the class notice board to record when alternative arrangements have been made for your child at the end of day.

Snacks

In Reception, we have two snack times each day: mid-morning and mid-afternoon. In keeping with the wider healthy eating policy of the school, we would ask you ONLY send a small portion of fruit, vegetables, crackers or breadsticks for each snack. No other kinds of snack please. We feel that this not only helps promote a positive attitude to healthy eating but also encourages good eating habits. Please do remember, however, that school fruit and vegetable snacks are available in class for all children daily.

Wow Moments

We continue to ask you to share your child’s “WOW” moments with us!  These provide an opportunity for you and your child to share, with the class, any significant moments in development and achievement which you identify.

WOW notes were sent home at the end of the autumn term, if you need more sheets please ask your class teacher.

Reading Practice Books 

These need to be brought into school every day and are changed on a Thursday.  If possible, could the book be protected in a wallet or plastic bag to stop water damage from leaking water bottles.

Named Property

May we remind you to label ALL children’s clothing, snack pots and water bottles, etc with your child’s name. Especially gloves, hats and scarfs during winter time.

Class PE

We ask that all children come to school in their PE kit on their PE day - PE shorts, T-shirt, trainers and a school jumper/cardigan. In colder weather track suit bottoms (ideally as plain as possible and in a dark colour such as blue, black or grey) can be worn instead of shorts.