Staff reward positive behaviour with a ‘dojo’. Parents join an online app, Class Dojo, which alerts them when their child receives a dojo. These may be given out for: good listening, sitting quietly and paying attention on the carpet, being kind or helpful, moving around the school in a sensible way and for many many more positive reasons. When each child in the class has collected 100 dojos we have a class celebration.

Class rules are agreed together in a class charter. When rules are broken we have a behaviour management system in Reception Class of a traffic light system. Children start on Green and if a rule is broken they are often given a reminder of the expected behaviour. Another occasion of poor behaviour results in their name moving to Amber. This is a visual reminder to change this behaviour. A further incidence of poor behaviour would result in their name moving to red. This then has a consequence. Children are asked to take a 5 minute time out to think about the behaviour and they lose 1 dojo point.

As a school we have a zero tolerance on intentionally hurting others. In this case you would automatically move to red.

On a very rare occasion children who then do not modify their behaviour would visit the Head Teacher’s office to discuss their actions.

Each day everyone returns to the green.

Reception class is usually staffed by one Teacher and a TA at any one time.

Is my child ready for school? What do they need to be able to do?

Children begin school with a range of abilities and we have experienced staff that will help your child to gain independence. In general we would like children to be able to:

• Manage their own toileting including wiping their own bottoms. While staff are near by and the toilets are part of the classroom, staff to not supervise toileting unless the child has a specific need.
• Be able to use a knife and fork to eat.
• Be able to put on their own coat, hat and scarf. Including zipping their coat up.
• Be able to take their own jumpers, socks and shoes off and put them back on.
• Be able to recognise their own name (this is very helpful). If they can write their own name this is even better.
• Be able to rote count to 5 and recognise these numerals. Be able to count 5 objects with one to one correspondence.

Each child is treated as an individual and support is tailored to suit them. If you have concerns about your child starting our school please contact us.

Our SENDCO is Sarah O’Sullivan, Deputy Head. If you require information about the local offer please follow visit About the Local Offer in County Durham section on the DCC website.

Currently we have an external provider Nutmeg & Sprout who provide breakfast and after school club.

As we don’t have our own nursery the Reception teacher works closely with feeder nursery schools. Children typically come from several local nurseries and quickly make friends. Transition usually involves

The Reception teacher arranging to visit the child in their setting and inviting the child into our school for a couple of short sessions to become familiar with staff and the building. Usually parents are invited to a meeting once they accept their place.

Some children require more transition work and this is organised to meet individual needs.

Yes. We love to play outdoors in all weathers. It is important that children are always dressed appropriately for the weather as sun, rain or snow we play outdoors.

Reception children have a Forest School and they go outside in all weathers on a Regular basis.

Children need to have a named pair of wellies kept at school at all times. The school provides a ‘mud suit’ to keep clothes clean and dry.

We believe in a balance between child led and adult led learning. Children come together on the carpet for teacher led input on subjects such as phonics, reading, maths and topic for a short focused amount of time. Children may then be asked to complete an activity as a small group, supported by an adult.

Topics may be seasonal, planned in response to children’s interests or to support specific learning intentions.Teachers value child initiated learning and learning through play.

At Kirk Merrington Primary the EYFS Framework learning is divided into 7 Areas:

These are the prime areas:

• communication and language
• physical development
• personal, social and emotional development.

The specific areas are:

• literacy
• mathematics
• understanding the world
• expressive arts and design

At the end of the Reception year children are assessed against the Early Learning Goals to determine if they have achieved a good level of development. This is a statutory assessment that is reported to parents and the local authority.

In the first term of school children begin to receive reading books. We start with picture books with no words to develop story telling and comprehension.

As children start to blend words together they receive simple story books that match to their phonic knowledge. These get progressively harder as they move through the reading scheme.

Children can go to our new school train library and choose a book to read with an adult.

Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. At Kirk Merrington we use Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds as our phonic programme.

Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read.

Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words.

Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch.  Teaching children to blend the sounds of letters together helps them decode unfamiliar or unknown words by sounding them out.

For example, when a child is taught the sounds for the letters t, p, a and s, they can start to build up the words: “tap”, “taps”, “pat”, “pats” and “sat”.

The Reception teacher holds a meeting in September/October time to discuss this further.

We advise that all children bring in a full water bottle to drink throughout the day. As we are a healthy school this must be water and not juice or fizzy drinks.