Welcome to Otters class page. We are a class of Reception, Year One and Year Two children who share a great classroom and even better outside space at the back of the school.
The class teacher is Miss Clements and she is supported throughout the week by Miss Tarsky, Mrs. Jeffery and Mrs. Mason.
Mr Tanner (the Trust P.E. lead) teaches P.E. to the class on a Tuesday, we will also have another taught P.E. session with Miss Clements during the week.
Our Curriculum
Our play-based curriculum in Otters is centred around the three characteristics of effective learning: playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically. We aim for a balance of child led, adult initiated and adult lead learning across the week. We love taking our learning outside whenever possible and regularly make use of our local area including; the play park, the church and it’s gardens, the community orchard and Headlands playing field. Each half term we will also head up to Broadhempston Community Woodland for our Forest School Sessions.
Please see the Topic Webs below for details of what your child will be up to each half term in school.
Phonics and Early Reading
Getting your child to read is one of our top priorities in Otters. We use the Phonics Bug scheme to teach the early stages of letter/ sound correspondence.
Please see the below documents to support your understanding of the sounds, images and resources that we will be using in class.
Across the year, children in EYFS will cover Phase 2 and 3. Children in Year 1 will consolidate their previous learning and cover Phase 5. At the end of Year 1, the children will take part in the Year 1 phonics screening check which checks their understanding of these taught phases.
In EYFS and Year 1, your child will also have access to Phonics Bug online. This platform includes simple games, additional books and additional online learning to further support what your child is doing in school. At the beginning of the academic year, you will be given your child's username and password.
In Year 2, the children continue to embed their phonic knowledge through carefully selected ‘bridging’ texts. Alongside this, the children will begin to move onto the Accelerated Reading Scheme (AR), when it is suitable. This is progressive reading scheme which begins to focus the children more on comprehension than simply decoding and reading the words. When the children have read the books (more than once), they take simple 5 question quizzes using iPads to check their understanding of what they’ve read. Each term, they will complete a ‘Star Reader’ quiz, which checks the levels of the books that they are reading.
Throughout Broadhempston Primary, we follow the White Rose scheme of learning for Maths. In EYFS and Year 1, this is taught through a variety of methods (predominately play, song and dance) as well as more formal written methods as and when appropriate. By the time children reach Year 2, they are more familiar with formal written methods in maths and we look to deepen and extend their understanding through a range of reasoning and problem-solving activities.
Alongside taught lessons, children have a wide variety of opportunities to consolidate their mathematical understanding through play during their ‘Discovery Time’.
We also make use of online learning platforms Numbots and (when appropriate) Times Tables Rockstars (TTRS). You will be given your child’s username and password for these platforms and these can be accessed from home.