Teacher Contact Information
Your teachers are: Mrs Horton and Miss Parker
You can email them at:
Mrs Horton (Horse Chestnut)
sophiehorton@stratton.cornwall.sch.uk
Miss Parker (Sweet Chestnut)
cherylparker@stratton.cornwall.sch.uk
Weekly Update 28/11/2025
This week was our final week learning about People Who Help Us and we have been learning all about firefighters! We started our learning with a firefighter role play on the terrace where we pretended to put out a fire in a dolls house fire on the terrace. The children loved getting dressed up and spraying the fire with water spray bottles!
Next week, we will begin our topic all about Christmas, starting with our RE learning about the Nativity story.
Church Trip:
Our trip to the Church for our Countdown to Christmas event is on Tuesday 9th December, during the morning. We now have enough volunteers. Thank you to those who have offered to help. We will send you a more detailed plan for the morning soon.
Class Christmas Party - food
For our Class Christmas Party, on Friday 19th December, we will be asking for a small food donation from each child for our party food lunch. Next week, we will bring the food list for you to choose what you would like to bring out with us at the end of each day when we dismiss the children.
Please remember we must have a list of ingredients for any food item. If not, we will be unable to serve it.
Christmas Cards
If your child would like to, they can make a Christmas card for the class, which we will share and display.
Phonics/Reading:
All of the children in Reception have now taken part of an interim assessment and some children are moving on to the next group for the last few weeks before half-term. We really appreciate your support with practising phonics at home; it has a big impact on the children’s progress.
Whilst the children have made good progress since their last assessment, some children are still struggling with their blending skills (the ability to blend individual sounds into words). In order to be on track with the RWI programme expectations, it would benefit the children to be able to verbally blend sounds into short words before the Christmas break.
All of the children will be reassessed in approximately 2 weeks’ time. Please ensure that you continue to regularly play Fred Games at home to support with your child’s blending skills. This can also be logged in your child’s reading log and counts towards the 5 phonics activities per week for your child’s reading homework.
Please remember to keep your child’s reading record and books in their book bag every day. This helps us to change their books regularly and check that they are practising at home. Thank you for your continued support with this.
Maths:
This week in maths, the children have been building upon their understanding of how numbers are made. We have been exploring the composition of numbers 3, 4 and 5 by splitting them into parts and putting them back into their whole amounts. For example, portioning a group of 3 counters into 2 counters and 1 counter. We have practised saying that parts make whole amounts, saying, “2 is a part, 1 is a part, and the whole is 3!”
For your home learning task this week, gather a 5 or less small objects (such as buttons, toy cars, dolls, etc.) and explore how the group of objects can be partitioned into two groups. Identify how many items are in each ‘part’ and what the ‘whole’ is when all of the items are put back together.
Have a brilliant weekend!
Mrs Horton and Miss Parker
Dates for the Dairy
Tuesday 9th December – Trip to the Church (AM)
Friday 12th December – Bike Track
Wednesday 17th December - Christmas Lunch/Christmas Jumper Day
Friday 19th December – Last Day of Term/Christmas Party Day
Weekly Reading Homework
With your child, please carry out a variety of the following tasks at least 5 times a week, recording in their reading log each time.
Practise recognising letter sounds using flashcards daily – this is essential practise to get your child reading.
Engage in 'Fred Talk Games'. These are games that support your child to orally blend sounds into words. For example, "Fred says, tap your h-ea-d... your head!" Please see the PDF document in the 'Read Write Inc. Phonics' section below for further 'Fred Talk Games' that you can play at home.
If your child is consistently recognising most of the single letter sounds from their flashcards, make simple words out of the flashcards for them to practise reading. For example, sat, tap, dog, bed. Encourage your child to point to each letter as they say the sounds. Once they have said each sound, they need to blend them together to say the whole word. For example, s – a –t, sat. They may need you to demonstrate this initially before they have a try.
Share your child’s lilac book. This book has no words. Your child needs to look closely at the picture and talk about what they think is happening to tell a story. This develops their oracy comprehension and inference skills.
Based on your child’s most recent phonics assessment, the may also bring home a 'blending book' or a 'ditty sheet' to read at home.
Please keep all of the above in your child’s book bag. They need to bring their book bag to school every day.
Homework tasks need to be recorded in your child's reading log at least 5 times a week so that we know that your child is practising their reading at home. Reading logs are checked every Friday to see how your child is getting on at home. Please make sure that you date and initial each time you record in your child's reading log to show that your child has read their lilac book/blending book/flash cards.
Please speak to any member of the Reception team if you have any questions.
Thank you for your continued support in helping your child learn to read.
The YR Team