Welcome to

Busy Bees Class

Our Teachers are

Mrs Johnston, Mrs Kearns & Miss Rolfe

(Mrs Johnston teaches on a Monday and Tuesday and Mrs Kearns teaches on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday)

and

Our teaching assistants are

Mrs Bennetts and Mrs Lawson

Our Busy Bees Foundation Stage Unit includes two indoor teaching and learning areas alongside our outdoor area.  The teaching and learning space is organised around the six areas of learning and development for the Foundation Stage Curriculum.

During the morning session the children are taught in two groups and will cover Phonics, Maths and Literacy activities. In the afternoon sessions the children come back together to access the other areas of the Foundation Stage Curriculum.  They will have group activities, small group tasks and will also be choosing their own activities that will involve self-initiated learning (Busy Bee Time). 

Seesaw - Seesaw is a great resource. We use seesaw to share useful information with families as well as photos and videos of your child's super learning. It's also a great way for parents and teachers to communicate with each other. Please send us a message if you have any questions, worries or queries or even if you'd just love to share something your child/family have been up to and we will get back to you as soon as we can. 

Reading- All children will read with their class teacher and a Teaching Assistant at least once each week during a guided reading or individual read session. Children will also experience daily story time sessions, helping to develop the children's love and enjoyment of reading.

We would ask you to read with your child as often as possible at home too- it really does make a huge difference to their progress. Children will bring books home from school, both a 'read to me' book from our reading spine selection for you to read to your child and a carefully chosen reading book for children to practice reading to you. This book will also be read during their reading sessions with their class teacher and Teaching Assistant, helping to build familiarity, confidence and fluency.

Reading books from home or from the local library is also great too! Talking with children about what they have read or asking questions about a story you have read to them is also invaluable and we are really grateful for your support in this area.

Beekeeper of the Week - All children will at some point receive the title 'Beekeeper of the Week' this celebrates something unique about each child and that they have demonstrated the qualities of a 'Welcoming light', 'Guiding light', 'Shining light' or perhaps 'Leading light'. Children will get a certificate and their picture goes up on the wall in the classroom. 

House Teams - Every child has a house team. They will remain in the same house team throughout their time in our school.  Our four house teams are Dragons (Green), Griffins (Yellow), Pegasus (Blue) and Phoenix (Red). House teams are a whole school system for promoting good behaviour as children can receive house points from any adult in school and add it to their class tally. Tallies are collected each week and added to a running total until, at the end of a term, a winner is announced! The winning house will usually get to wear their own clothes one day during the following term. On PE days, Sport's Day and other house team challenge days, children can wear their house colours to represent their team.

Snack -Children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One will be provided with a fruit snack every morning.

Children are to bring a water bottle in from home. These can be refilled whenever necessary.

Outdoor Explorers - Outdoor Explorers is an opportunity to explore our local environment and breathe in the wonders of God's creation.

Important Information

Phonics Information

Children have daily phonics sessions following the ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ programme. Children learn through synthetic phonics, the teaching of writing in which particular graphemes (letters) and their associated phonemes (sounds) are decoded through segmentation to spell words. Children have daily sessions progressing through the phases within the ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ progression document.

We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English Language and how they can be represented, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.