Welcome to Ash Class (Reception)
In Ash Class you will find:
What is happening in Autumn Term?
This will be your first term in Ash Class. We hope that you enjoy it and are looking foward to all the exiciting things we have planned !
We will be doing lots of learning through play and becoming famailir with some of the new expectations and routines within Ash Class. Our learning will include finding out about many exciting mini topics, including; ourselves, our families, our class, as well as, special people, places and events.
For more details please see our project letter.
We will be reading a range of fiction and non-fiction texts to help us become great story tellers !
Our first Pathways to Write story this term will be Peace at Last . As part of this story we will be exploring the characters, settings and events, as well as looking at some of the story lanauge and vocabulary.
Look out for us bringing home our own version of this story, complete with actions, for you to help us practise!
Here are some of the rhymes we will be learning about our story;

Homework
Reading Books
To begin with, your child will be recieving a sharing book for you to share and read to them. This is an opportunity for them to hear how stories read, engage with book and talk about the characters and events which are happening. Please make sure that you child to your child read at least 3 times a week and complete the reading record with any comments about your child's engagement with the story. We change reading books once a week, however your child's book needs to be in everyday.
Reading Rockets
This term the children will also be receiving a Reading Rocket. These are words that the children have to learn by sight. The children will progress up the rockets once they can confidently read all the words on each rocket. There are Ten rockets to get. Can you get them all?
In school our children are expected to follow our school golden rules:
- I do as I am asked the first time
- I listen well
- I work well with others
- I always do the best I can
Children will be awarded PALS points in school when they follow these rules and their names will be added to our weekly newsletter once they reach 20/30/40!
Daily Phonics
We are taught phonics through the “Read Write Inc” structured programme of teaching. To begin with the children are taught in 15-20 minute sessions each day, through games, actions and use of flashcards and magnetic letters, learning how to say the sound (phoneme) for each letter (grapheme) and groups of letters like sh, ch, igh (digraphs and trigraphs). They learn to hear and say the sounds in words like c-a-t by pulling them apart (segmenting) and putting them back together (blending). They will sometimes bring some phonics homework home where they can practice writing the sound they have been learning. These vital skills help them to read words that are phonetically spelt but some words, that cannot be easily decoded, are learnt as ‘tricky words’ such as ‘come’ and ‘the’. These skills are then applied to learning to spell and to write sentences.
For more informtion visit:
https://www.ruthmiskin.com/parents/
Reading
You will be asked to fill in the yellow Reading Record book each time you hear your child read at home or you share their sharing book. For every 10 occasions your child reads at home, and this is recorded in their reading champion’s book, they will receive a certificate and a special mention in the school newsletter.
Please be honest with your comments, if your child had problems with certain words or found the book very difficult, please say so. Perhaps they have mastered the vocabulary but still cannot tell you what the story is about. Do not be afraid to leave a message to ask us to send home the same book again; this is not a race and moving on too quickly may result in difficulties at a later stage. In the very early stages, it is fine to simply tell your child an unknown word and explain what it means. Do not let your child struggle with trying to sound out words that are not phonetically decodable, for example ‘tricky words’ such as ‘come’ and ‘who’ which cannot be sounded out as c-o-m-e and w-h-o.