Joy

Welcome to the ‘Classroom of Joy!’

Joy Class welcomed 9 new reception children this year to the ever growing numbers. These children joined our existing Year 1 children who are essential in helping us establish our routines with our newest recruits.  The value we put on helping one another runs through everything we do and is reinforced by the pastoral work we do on the 6Rs and our school values.  These are a priority as we navigate the year together.

In Year 1 English our story writing is a focus, concentrating on sentences and punctuation rules which are so important in early writers.  We explore new vocabulary which will form part of our writing toolkit as we move up through the school. Children are exposed to a wide variety of texts in different contexts to build word banks and literary techniques which can then be used effectively in their writing. While Year 1 are writing daily during their literacy lessons, Reception are much more engaged in the verbal process, working on sequencing of stories, role play and games around a text.

It is in Joy Class where children learn to read and we place a great emphasis on the daily teaching of phonics and encouraging a love of books which are ever present in our classroom. We use the Little Wandle Systematic Synthetic Programme offering daily phonics, intensive reading sessions three times a week and regular assessment and catch up sessions to ensure that "no child is left behind" in their reading journey.

 As always, Maths permeates much of what we do and there are many opportunities for us to use our classroom based learning in the outdoors and across the curriculum as a whole. Number work is integral to our learning and we take every opportunity to practice our numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in a practical way wherever possible

Our topic work begins this year with a History focus as we study the life of Grace Darling. We then take a trip around the world in Geography learning about the 7 continents and 5 oceans.  After the October break we then move on to learning about Materials in our Science investigations.  We will be integrating our Science learning with our Art module on Sculpture, using the materials we have been investigating in our Science and exploring significant artists to inspire our creations.   

As the year progresses, children will be exposed to many and varied themes as we explore different aspects of the non-core curriculum in a way that is relevant to them: Music, Drama, Art, Science, History, Geography, Computer Studies, Design Technology and PE all go to form a broad and rich curriculum for our youngest children in the school.

Of course, a big part of our learning is outdoors.  We start our forest learning looking for signs of the seasons.  Use of our fabulous “Classroom of Wonder” will be on-going with lessons taking place in this outdoor space where appropriate.  We also are fortunate enough to have two wonderful spaces either side of our classroom where children can further apply their learning outdoors and initiate their own learning too.

There is always something exciting happening in Joy Class and we look forward to welcoming you as a volunteer to one of our Forest School sessions or as a Reading Champion.

 We look forward to seeing you soon.

Mrs Swan, Miss Harris and Mrs Forshaw and the children of Joy Class