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Jackson Class

At Reed First School, Jackson Class covers the period of time the children spend in Nursery and Reception. The class teachers are Mrs Arnott and Mrs Cottenden.

We operate a flexible induction programme so that the needs of each individual child can be met.

In our Early Years unit we have created an environment which supports, encourages and stimulates the children to become independent learners.    Our learning is planned with a play based focus and is driven by the interests and needs of each individual cohort.   We follow The Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and Development Matters (non-statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage) to ensure our planned activities and opportunities for Child Initiated Learning enable every child to reach their full potential and expected outcomes for end of each stage in Early Years.

We also follow Little Wandle Synthetic Phonics Government validated phonics programme and NCTEM maths mastery programme for both Nursery and Reception pupils.

Each week, we have a clear focus through a theme which is always one which is meaningful and relevant to the cohort and focused areas of learning.  These themes are planned specifically for each cohort and so will change year on year but ensure all areas of learning are covered through carefully planned activities and environments.

Below is an example of our curriculum coverage plans for a year.

Early Years Curriculum overview 2024 2025 (398.77KB)

Please also view the class letter for news from Jackson Class at the bottom of this page.

Autumn Term 2024

We have had a super start to the school year with all our new children settling in really well, making friends and becoming familiar with our routines and expectations.

Jackson class children love sharing stories, we have a cosy reading area with three ‘star stories’ each half term selected so children can become really familiar with them and enjoy sharing with their friends without being dependent on adults. Our star stories for Autumn 1 have been We’re going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen, Elmer by David McKee and Peace at Last by Jill Murphy. For Autumn 2 we have selected Room on a Broom by Julia Donaldson, Freddie and the Fairy by Julia Donaldson and Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers.

We have also based some of our activities around some other favourite books including Owl Babies and Wow said the Owl as we were settling in. We had a couple of weeks where our theme was ‘All about me!’. The children painted self-portraits and drew beautiful pictures of who lives at home with them.

The children loved sharing their ‘All about me’ boxes with their new class. It was so lovely to hear them talk about their favourite and most special things!

Each week two children are chosen to bring in something from home to share for our Show and Tell sessions, we love hearing all about what is special to them and having the opportunity to ask questions!

 

 

We read The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas which is a wonderful book to help children explore their emotions and give names, and more simply colours, to help express their feelings. We introduced our regulation station as a comfortable, quiet place to go if they feel they want to be calm.

 

 

 

With the temperature dropping we are now exploring autumn as our theme enjoying books including books from The Large Family series by Jill Murphy, The Leaf Thief by Alice Hemming and Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. We are learning new songs about autumn too including ‘Autumn leaves are falling’, ‘I go walking in the trees’ and ‘It’s apple time!’. Children enjoyed finding autumn treasures and sharing them with the class. We have them on display and will continue to add to these and use them in discussions across our areas of learning.

We have been harvesting our own delicious class tomatoes and enjoyed tasting our own grown produce. We have another bumper crop of rhubarb which has been giving us some extra pennies to spend on resources when the children open a stall to parents.

We had such a fun week of learning with an apple week theme! We started by learning about the different parts of an apple. We learnt some songs about apples including “It’s Apple Time” and “5 Little Apples”. We compared the size and weight of apples. We practised balancing apples on top of cardboard tubes. We used pastels to create super observational drawings of apples. The children were able to taste from a selection of varying apples and some children were surprised by how different they tasted! Following a vote about different types of apples we found that the most popular in our class was red apples! We learnt how to peel and chop apples and made a delicious apple crumble!

In Reception maths, we have been subitising 1-3, this means ‘seeing’ the number without the need to count. We have played lots of games including the ladybird game and flower pot game which are great to make ‘seeing’ the number quick and automatic. Please play lots of games at home too as they are so beneficial for all areas of learning from recognising number of dots on a dice, to taking turns and coping with not always winning!  We explore the composition of numbers, the cardinality and ordinality up to 5 and comparison of number and quantity.

In Nursery maths, we have been practising counting 1-5 learning to line up and touch count each item as they say a number, recognising numerals 1-3, subitising (seeing) numbers 1-3 and representing a number on their fingers. We sing lots of songs to help with their mathematical understanding too.

We love to keep the activities fun and active and think of ways to incorporate our learning objectives into their play!

In phonics, we follow the Little Wandle synthetic phonics programme and this term Reception will be introduced to a new letter sound each day, review the sounds they have previously covered, learn how the grapheme and phoneme correspond. The correct letter formation is modelled and the children use whiteboards to practise writing the grapheme. We use the sounds previously learnt to first orally blend to read words then using the graphemes blend to read together.

We are encouraging the children to write their name and have name cards to support them with this. As they learn a new letter sound, we also demonstrate how to form the letter correctly and send them home with a sheet so parents can support their children at home too.

In Nursery we use the Foundations for learning Little Wandle scheme which includes a daily phonics sessions, a weekly deep dive into a book for the ‘love of reading’, and a focus on language introducing a new nursery rhyme each week. Children enjoy playing with sounds in active games including sound discrimination listening to environmental sounds and instruments, exploring body percussion and enjoying rhythm and rhymes.

Child initiated learning is a big part of our timetable and the adults value time with the children observing first their interests and chosen activities then providing questions, suggestions or prompts to scaffold and extend their learning.

For example, in child initiated learning a child brought over to me a paper and parts crafted beetle. He pointed out 4 legs and ‘pinchers’. Together we then looked up more information about beetles on the interactive whiteboard and he was then able to say it was a Stag Beetle and discovered insects have 6 legs, he was able to work out independently he needed to more and went off to make the necessary adjustments!  He was proud to share his model with the rest of the class and inform them all how many legs an insect has which then began a discussion over snack about how many legs other creatures have!

We had a very exciting outdoor assembly when our PCSO Hannah brought the rural Police quad bike and pick-up truck. Children were able to ask questions and continue to forge strong links with our community.

Jackson class children and their parents were invited to come dressed ready for bed for a relaxing bedtime story! The evening was complete with fairy lights, a roaring fire and hot chocolate with marshmallows as we shared some favourite bedtime stories.

Here are some more photos of our Autumn Term!

Spring Term 2025

We had an exciting start to our term with a pantomime performance of Cinderella in our hall. This initiated lots of wonderful learning in Jackson class, the children were inspired to dress up and act the story out too, making tickets and setting seats up for the audience. Children created castles, crowns, slippers and fans! Some chose to create grandfather clocks and we used them to sing the song Hickory dickory dock using a finger puppet mouse as a prop. The children drew super pictures of the characters from the story and the Reception children wrote sentences about their favourite characters.

We love to read in Jackson class and each half term pick three ‘Star Stories’ that we read regularly with the children so they become so confident they can read the books to themselves or to their friends. We often accompany the book with props so they can act out the story too. Our star stories this term have been: The Gruffalo, Pink is for girls and Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?, Mr Big, Not a Box and The Tiger who came to tea.

We always focus on the current season. Our winter books included Hedgehog’s Winter book, Robin’s Winter Song, Little Snowflake, Lost in the snow and The Snow Thief. We had some wonderfully cold icy days to enjoy icy investigations!

The children created super paintings of characters from One Snowy Night and brilliant clues written by reception children for a ‘What am I?’ game.

For Chinese New Year we learnt how people celebrate across the world, we ate stir fried vegetables and noodles with chopsticks and made an enormous dragon which we used to perform a dragon dance alongside half the class who were drumming inspired by clips we had seen, then they swapped roles.

On our return after half term we arranged for some mystery visitors for our theme ‘People Who Help us’. We were lucky to have a talk from some firefighters who also showed us their fire engine the first week.

We always ensure our provision covers all areas of learning across the week. The children created super artwork of fire engines and further strengthened their fine motor skills dressing up as firefighters using water squirters to put ‘fires’ out! They made fire engines out of large cardboard boxes and had to negotiate sharing hoses.

The reception children used their phonic knowledge to label parts of their fire engine.

The second week we had a Chief Inspector from the Met Police who brought in a big bag of kit including various hats and jackets for the children to try on. They enjoyed seeing Mrs Browne get hand cuffed!

And in the third week we had a nurse visit with so many activities and equipment to share with the children, we explored body parts and discovered what is in a first aid kit, how to put a bandage on and take blood pressure. The children enjoyed dressing up as doctors and nurses role playing various scenarios.

They were all fascinated to hear from our mystery guests, shared some of what they already knew and asked very interesting questions!

All of our guests explained to the children how to ring 999 in an emergency and challenged the children to learn their address so they can raise the alarm if they need to.

We always celebrate world book day and enjoyed seeing how creative people had been putting together wonderful costumes from their favourite books! Even the staff enjoy dressing up; this year in Jackson Class as characters from What the Ladybird Heard.

With the onset of Spring, we went for a beautiful walk around the village to see what signs of spring we could find. We spotted buds in the trees and hedgerows, daffodils, blossom, heard lots of birds singing and even found some frogspawn in the village pond.
We sat by the pond, read: That’s My Flower and enjoyed a drink and a piece of flapjack which we had baked the previous day.

The children were excited to see some of the bulbs they had planted last year giving us a beautiful spring flower display in The Burrow – our nature garden. We have spread some wildflower seeds to hopefully enjoy this summer. The children created beautiful observational drawings of snowdrops and enjoyed watching the spring bulbs grow on our observation station in the classroom.

We have an adventurous cohort who have been on some wonderful breaks away. We know that not everyone can get away but have so enjoyed celebrating these incredible experiences of camel riding, dune boarding, sleigh rides, Legoland, seeing a lion roar up close on a safari, towering castles and listening to the bagpipes. We look at ‘where in the world’ they have been, talk about how they got there, what they did and even the food they ate as well as seeing any special mementos they brought back! We have put a map up on display with some photos and even postcards that have been sent and keep adding to it!

We then celebrated Mother’s Day with a wonderful day with our mums, grandmas, nanny’s, aunties enjoying crafty activities before learning about the Easter story and enjoying the annual whole school Easter egg hunt in the school field!

 

For phonics, Reception children have been learning the Phase 3 sounds this term. Nursery children also have a daily Foundations for Phonics session, which is part of the Little Wandle programme and prepares them for learning to read and write through listening games, identifying and making different sounds, listening to a range of stories, learning nursery rhymes and songs.

 

For maths, Reception children developed their skills and accuracy with

  • Counting, ordinality and cardinality – counting aloud larger numbers, 5 and a bit, 1 more/1 less, ordering numbers
  • Comparison – subitise equal/not equal, ordering numbers with reasoning
  • Composition – describe numbers as parts of a whole, splitting numbers into smaller component numbers and sorting and grouping objects, odds and evens
  • Composition – sorting and grouping objects, odds and evens
  • Measuring, focusing on compare length, height and time.

Nursery children focused on subitising (seeing without counting) 1-3, accurate counting of objects up to 5, recognising numerals and matching amounts to numerals. Children used positional language such as ‘in front of’ and language such as “more than” to compare quantities.

 

Children also have a dedicated PE lesson, Jigsaw (Personal, social, health and emotional – focusing on Dreams and goals and healthy me) and Forest School session each week.

We value the importance of child initiated learning and love to see where their creativity takes us!

Summer Term 2025

The Summer term is always so exciting with so much to fit in!

We started the term exploring lifecycles using the books The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Teeny-Weeny Tadpole and Monkey Puzzle as our weekly introductions to a new lifecycle. We create an interactive table where the children have access to related information and fiction books, puzzles, 3D models, props and this year we had frogspawn that we collected from the village pond and marvel as they transform into tadpoles, then froglets in front of our eyes. We took pleasure in releasing them back to nature, some to the original pond, but some in our new pond in our nature garden. We hope next year we may have our own frogs laying frogspawn we can observe from our new jetty.

 

We carefully plan our resources to ensure there are other resources available for continuous provision. We have lots of children who love challenging themselves mathematically in play. They demonstrate plan, do and review in their play as they talk about what they are going to do, e.g. make two towers the same size. They used fine motor skills to build tall towers, they then counted the cubes to check and compare their towers, then realised they did not have enough in the pot, yet one had reached 21 the other only had 19, they then discussed ways to solve the problem… “ask for more cubes” one child suggests, the other says “if we take one from 21 that will be 20 and add it to 19, they will both be 20!”. They were both delighted and proudly shared their achievement!

What a lot of hot weather we have had! So much so we decided we needed to cool off! We are lucky to have air conditioning in the classroom, but we thought more exciting to create Turtle Bay Foot Spa to present an opportunity to cool down in the shade, have a chat with our friends, taking turns (writing our name on a waiting list) and practice independence and fine motor control taking our shoes and socks on and off and using the rack to ensure they stay dry!

Child initiated learning is a big part of our day as the children have such wonderful ideas of what they want to do and the adults are there to observe, support, scaffold and challenge their play and learning.

We have a wonderful garden and enjoy developing in all areas, however it does present lots of amazing opportunities for physical development. This summer term the children grew in confidence to not only climb the tree, but to hang and drop down too! Being able to support their own weight hanging is really important to be able to develop the strength required for writing!

The children had been so fascinated by photos shared from a safari holiday that we decided to learn more about wild animals and go to Shepreth Wildlife park for our school trip.

They had opportunities to ask questions and learn all sorts of interesting facts about wild animals. Did you know…a penguin has a white tummy to help it camouflage when swimming and hide from predators lurking in the sea below?  However, they are dark on their back to blend in to the colour of the sea from predators above!

We had such a fun packed day there were lots of sleeping children on the coach on the way home! The sign of a great trip!

Last year we held a Europe Day where children with links to Europe were able to take their passport and discover the food, flag, music, language etc of different countries. It was such a success, this year we ventured out of Europe and again had children and some of their parents help to share the customs and cultures from around the world from, such as eating seaweed and learning to say “hello” in Mandarin, when we “visited” China.

In the summer term we love to grow plants and enjoy reading books such as Jasper’s Beanstalk and Sam Plants a Sunflower. We were happy to be able to plant our beans this year in our new raised beds in our nature garden! We also planted sunflower and sweet pea seeds and enjoyed watching the incredible rate of growth and seeing in action what the books had taught us. The children enjoyed the daily task of watering the plants. We had to create the role ‘Watering Monitor’ to give everyone a turn.

At the end of each summer term we perform a whole school show expertly put together by Mrs Wittich. The children are always super stars with the eldest taking on the main roles where it is a joy to see their confidence and characters shine through! This year was The Bee Musical. Jackson Class supports the show with a dance created with the children’s own dance move ideas and sing the catchy songs. We realised we were loving learning lots of new facts in the songs and decided to make it our theme and learn all about bees! The children were fascinated to see a real bumble bee close up, learning the different parts of a bee and about pollination. We even had a bee keeper in to explain how they care for bees and share with the children how bees make honey!

 

Move up day was an exciting opportunity for the Reception children to go to have a taster day in their new class ready for Year 1 and for Jackson class to meet our new children who will be starting. It was super to see the nursery children who are set to be Reception ready to be the older role models and show the new children how our day flows.

The reception children also had the opportunity to join the year 1 and 2 class on their trip to Stansted Mountfitchet castle and toy museum. Meanwhile, the nursery had a super ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ day. We each brought in our teddies, baked and decorated shortbread bear biscuits and enjoyed a picnic, stories and games on the school field.

We had a wonderful fun-filled end of term, sharing all our best bits of the year and coming together for a very special surprise celebration on the last day of term to celebrate Mrs Wittich’s 50th birthday! We had such fun decorating biscuits in the hall, singing and dancing and presenting her with our cards and gifts.