Learning in the Foundation Stage

October 2020

Unfortunately we are unable to invite you into school this year (as we usually would) for
a ‘learning workshop.’ We are therefore providing some information which we hope that
you will find useful in understanding a little bit more about the Foundation Stage
Curriculum (especially if this is your first experience of the English education system),
and to give you a few ideas to support your child’s learning at home.

For your information, the areas of learning in the Foundation Stage have been put into
prime and specific groups, namely:

Prime areas (those essential areas of development which start from a very early
age and which underpin a child’s further learning).
 Personal, social and emotional development (PSED)
 Physical development (PD)
 Communication & Language (understanding, listening and speaking) (CAL)

Specific areas
 Literacy (reading and writing))
 Mathematics (number, shape and calculation)
 Understanding the World, including ICT (UW)
 Expressive arts and design (EAD), including painting, drawing, dance,
imaginative play, construction etc.

At this age the importance of LANGUAGE cannot be stressed enough, be it spoken,

heard or written. After all, how can we expect children to read and write fluently if they
are unable to hear sounds in words, speak with any degree of fluency or with an
adequate vocabulary? One thing we work really hard on in Reception is listening. We
would be so grateful if you could reinforce this at home by taking the time to listen to
things together (without any distractions if possible!), playing games, and showing your
child how to listen e.g. with good eye contact and no interrupting.

Our aim is to provide an environment which reflects the importance of language; to give
opportunities to develop language in all areas of learning; to provide ample opportunity
for children to communicate and to develop their own ideas and feelings; to link
language to physical movement through songs and rhymes and to use imaginative
language in role play and practical activities.

We hope that you will find this information useful during your child’s time with us, but
please feel free to ask us if anything is unclear.

With best wishes

The Foundation Stage Team

Literacy
PHONICS
We teach phonics based on a national strategy called Letters and Sounds. This was
introduced to improve the way children learn their letter sounds and to make it easier for them to
blend sounds together to make whole words. It also has the aim of teaching children to listen
well and be better able to discriminate between and have fun with lots of different sounds – not
just letters but also, for example, musical instruments, rhymes and environmental sounds.
Children are encouraged to hear letter sounds before they read or write the letters. We are
playing lots of listening games and will continue to do so throughout Reception, alongside the
phonics programme. We have just started teaching the letter sounds and aim to teach 4 a
week, but we will be guided by the children and will slow down or speed up as necessary. We
use the Jolly Phonics scheme to a large extent – each letter sound comes with a physical action
to help the children remember the sound. The first 6 letters we teach are s, a, t, p, i, n – this is
because we can quickly start word-building with these letters (sat, sit, tip, tap, pit, pat, pan,
pin…!). We can also quickly introduce high frequency words such as ‘in’, ‘at’, ‘is’, it’

HANDWRITING
In Reception we teach the children how to print, in preparation for precursive writing in Year 1.
You will find a copy of the letter shapes (and the rhymes we use to help them remember) in the
inside cover of your child’s home learning book. We spend a fair amount of time focusing on
finger-strengthening activities in a variety of fun ways before we actually start forming the actual
letters. We provide the children with lots of opportunities to write indoors and outdoors – in the
role play areas, on whiteboards, on post-it notes, in the sand, on clip boards, and even on
displays. We will also be using letter formation rhymes to support the children in their writing.
There is a copy of these in the home learning books.

READING
Along with their phonic knowledge, children need to become familiar with a certain number of
high frequency words. These are also called ‘key words’ and we refer to them in Reception as
our Rainbow Words. Some of these words can be sounded out, such as ‘am’, ‘and’, ‘mum’ and
‘dad’. Others just have to be learnt e.g. ‘the’, ‘said’ and ‘they’ – these will have a camera next to
them to remind your child that they have to ‘take a picture’ in their head. There are 45 high
frequency words for the children to learn during their year in Reception. You will receive these
in small sets every 2 weeks for them to learn and practice.

We will be reading with children on a one-to-one basis at the start of each day. The emphasis is
very much on developing good reading skills, and especially decoding unfamiliar words with
their new phonic skills. The books we use build on the letter sounds in the same order that we
teach them, so the children are constantly consolidating their knowledge and skills. Later in the
year we will supplement this with group guided reading sessions as well. Children will be
bringing reading books home this Friday. We will start all children with wordless books to
encourage them to use the pictures to tell a story, predict what happens next and give their
opinion on the book. We will move children onto books with words when we feel it is
appropriate.
 WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP AT HOME?

- Take time to really listen to your child and make sure that they are looking at you
when they speak to you, and listening to you when you are speaking.
Please discourage them from interrupting when you are talking. This is a very bad
habit to break and children then find it hard not to call out in class!

- Listen to or sing nursery rhymes or songs together, or make up silly rhymes.

- Find time to share and enjoy books with your child – local libraries have a great
range of books and cost nothing to join!

- Please encourage your child to speak in full sentences – don’t be content with one
or two words! Repeat the correct version back to them, especially with past tenses
or pronouns (her taked my pencil – she took my pencil)

- Play ‘I-Spy’ or ‘I hear with my little ear’… using initial sounds first, then final sounds.

- Play Pelmansim with sets of letters or Rainbow words (turning two cards over to see
if they match).

- Be letter detectives – hunting for letters when you are out and about… in the
supermarket, Post Office, on the bus etc. or see how many of a certain letter you
can find on one page, a plastic bag or a car number plate!

- Get your child to write your shopping list (children often only hear certain sounds, so
potatoes might look like ‘ptos’). If your child is still at the mark-making stage, praise
them… they are showing an understanding of the importance of writing.

- If your child finds holding a pencil hard, get them to do other practical activities to
strengthen their pincer movement, for example peg boards, jigsaw puzzles or bead
threading. Chunky pens and pencils are much easier for them to hold and there are
some good triangular pencil grips available which encourage a good pencil grip.

- Use other ways of writing, e.g. in the sand on the beach, with finger paint, write
letters on each other’s backs, or in salt or flour on the table.

- Children love writing on little note pads or coloured post-it notes - these are readily
available in supermarkets or stationers.

- You could invest in a set of magnetic high frequency words for your fridge! These
are great for word recognition and sentence building (approx. £3).
Mathematics
It seems strange to mention LANGUAGE again in the area of maths, but it really is
important! Most of our mathematical activities are practical and not only help the
children develop their number skills but also their listening and speaking skills as well.
We also want them to be able to articulate how they have worked something out...
Children come into Foundation Stage with a really wide variety of mathematical
knowledge and skills, but whatever their level of knowledge, they need to develop the
mathematical language to explain their thinking.

Number
We often hear parents say that their child can count to 100... This is a great skill and the
child is obviously aware of the sounds numbers and is able to recite them. However,
this does not necessarily reflect the child’s understanding of numbers and counting, or
of patterns in the number system. It is good idea to point out numbers that appear in
everyday contexts such as on a clock, a phone, on doors, beach huts, car number
plates, coins etc. This helps a child understand that numbers have a practical use as
well as helping them to recognise written numbers.

We aim to help children develop their number skills by:

1. One-to-one correspondence
This means being able to match one object to one other object or person. You can
practise this skill in all sorts of different contexts, for example, laying the table or sharing
a bar of chocolate.

2. Estimating and Counting – How many are there?

As children count objects it is a good idea to get them to touch (or move) each one so
that they understand they are counting things one at a time. Very often children say the
numbers too fast and their fingers can’t catch up! As they get better at this they find
they don’t have to touch or move what they are counting.
Counting opportunities arise all the time at home or out shopping, e.g. counting cutlery
or counting out fruit or vegetables into a bag in the supermarket etc. It is also a good
idea to get your child to guess how many objects they can see before they count – this
develops their ability to ‘estimate’ different amounts sensibly (not just saying the highest
number they can think of!). Always count them out together afterwards so that they can
see how close they were. Cooking is also a wonderful way (time permitting!) to practise
counting and to extend mathematical vocabulary, for example, counting baking cases,
spoonfuls of sugar, chocolate buttons etc.
The number of objects remains the same...

It is important for children to develop the ability to count accurately (or ‘reliably’)
however a number of objects is arranged (as above), so touching the objects slowly and
carefully is helpful.

NUMBER RECOGNITION AND FORMATION

In class we often talk about the shape of numbers when we play guessing games. We
ask the children to guess which number we are thinking of by slowly revealing a small
part of the number. For example, number 8 – useful questions are, “what number could
it be? (0,2,3,8,9 – why? Because it’s curved at the top). What number can’t it be?
(1,4,5,7 – why? Because they have straight lines etc.).

It is quite common at this stage for children to reverse their numbers, but encouraging
your child to form numbers in the standard way will help – bad habits are hard to break!.

CALCULATING

In this area of maths the children need to:

 understand the language of ‘more ‘ or ‘less’ and say which number is one more or
one less than a given number.
 understand that addition is the combining of two sets or groups of objects
 understand that subtraction is ‘taking away’
 start using the language of addition and subtraction
 develop ways to work out practical problems involving addition or subtraction , e.g.
using their fingers or counting forwards or backwards, doubling or halving
 begin to add and subtract two single digit numbers e..g. 5+4, 9-3....
 Shape, space and measure (SSM)
This area is probably the language-rich of all. We want the children to be able to
explain their thinking using a wide range of mathematical vocabulary and phrases and
want them to....

 be able to sort a range of objects and explain what they done

 be able to recognise and continue a repeated pattern, e.g.
 be able to talk about simple shapes that they see or use in pictures and models e.g.
“I’ve used a big square and triangle to draw my rocket”
 develop the language to describe regular shapes e.g. a square has 4 straight sides
and 4 corners (not “pointy bits”!)
 develop a wider vocabulary to talk about the size of objects e.g. tall, short, narrow,
wide, long, short... (not just ‘big’ and ‘small’!)
 be able to compare the size of objects using more mathematical language e.g. “my
tower is taller than yours”, “that line of cars is longer than that one...”
 be able to say where something is e.g. behind, in front of , opposite....

Shapes
Square, circle, triangle, oblong,
rectangle, diamond, hexagon,
cylinder, cube, cuboid, sphere,
corners, edges, faces, surfaces
sides, straight, curved, flat
shapes, solid shapes

Comparative language
More, less, more, fewer, longer,
shorter, the biggest, the
shortest, full, empty, full, deep,
shallow, half-full, half-empty…
Addition and subtraction
Add, plus, double, take away, language
Positional
minus, half, equals, howunder,
Over, many above, below, on
altogether? What’s onebehind, in front of,
top of,
more? What’s onebeside,
less? We
next to, forwards,
need one more… backwards, sideways…
 Useful websites to support learning at home:

Support for parents

 https://www.theschoolrun.com/

 https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/what-is-letters-and-sounds/

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zks4kmn

Phonics games for children

 https://www.phonicsbloom.com/

 https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zf2yf4j (phase 2 phonics)

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zvq9bdm (phase 3 phonics)

 https://www.readwithphonics.com/

General learning games (maths and literacy)

 https://www.topmarks.co.uk/

 http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Early-Years

 https://www.ictgames.com/

Good apps which can be downloaded

 Teach your monster to read
 ‘Twinkl’ Phase 2 and 3 phonics
As always, please come and ask if you have any questions. Thank you for your
on-going support.