Welcome to The Meadow!
About Us
| Pupils: | Reception |
| Teacher: | Mrs Tracy Grundy |
| Teaching Assistants: | Mrs Heather Salter and Mrs Amy Spicer |
The Meadow Long-Term Plan, 2025-26
General Information
We work on developing our reading, writing, and mathematics skills. The termly class topics develop Scientific skills, knowledge of history, geography, and ICT and also include creative development, focusing on Art and DT, as well as skills associated with maths and literacy.
We are fortunate to have an outdoor area which is used by all children in The Meadow and The Woodland. The children have constant access to the outdoor area and readily use it to extend or develop their thinking through activities that have been selected by either themselves or ones that are based around their interests, there is also opportunity for some free play.
As a church school, we place a strong focus on developing our students’ knowledge of the Christian faith and their appreciation and understanding of other religions. We say grace together at lunchtime, and the children take turns offering a prayer to end the school day.
This class follows the whole-school behaviour policy, and children are constantly praised and rewarded for excellent behaviour, work, and effort in a variety of ways. They receive stickers or certificates and may be sent to show Miss Hastings their work!
What should your child have each day?
The children in the class are all required to bring to school each day….
• A waterproof coat for outdoor play
• A water bottle so that they can have quick and easy access to a drink whenever they want
• A book bag, with a reading book, their library book and a reading record book
• Every child should bring their PE Kit to school on a Monday and leave it there all week
• On a Monday we ask that the children bring an appropriate change of clothes for our ‘Forest school’ adventure afternoons
Useful documents and links
It is widely recognised the vital role that parents have in supporting their children’s learning and development. Parents need to know what to expect regarding their child’s development across the different age bands of the EYFS. What to expect, when? is a simple guide which takes parents through the expectations of each age band in the EYFS and how they can support their children’s learning and development.
-
Toilets and school readiness
-
New parent presentation – Welcome to The Meadow!
-
’50 things before you’re 5′ (Oxfordshire)
-
Suggested apps and games for early years learning
- Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026
- Safe sleep advice can be found at – https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/baby-safety/safer-sleep-information/safer-sleep-overview/
Parents’ guide for our phonics programme ‘Essential Letters and Sounds’
Reading is the most important skill a student will learn. Reading has far-reaching implications for lifelong confidence and well-being. We are aware that learning to read is challenging for some children, although many learn very quickly. An independent review of reading undertaken by the government concluded that:
“High quality phonic work should be the prime means for teaching students to read.”
Sir Jim Rose, The Rose Review of Reading 2006.
With this in mind, we launched Essential Letters and Sounds at Great Rollright in October 2025. Essential Letters and Sounds is a synthetic phonics program that provides a systematic approach to teaching reading, writing and spelling. Essential Letters and Sounds is fully compatible with the broad and rich curriculum available at Great Rollright School. It has improved phonics learning enormously!
What is Synthetic Phonics?
Synthetic phonics is a way of teaching children to read. It teaches children how sounds are represented by written letters. Children are taught to read by blending sounds to form words.
For example, they will be taught that the letters ‘m-a-t’ blend together to make ‘mat’. A synthetic phonics programme, such as ELS, is a structured approach to teaching these sounds in a specific order to support gradual learning for children. It is used daily during Reception and Year 1 to teach all the sounds in the English language.
How is ELS taught in schools?
With ELS, there is a daily phonics lesson where the teacher teaches a new sound or reviews sounds learned earlier in the week. This is shown to the class on the whiteboard.
Children learn the letters that represent the sounds. They are then asked to read words and sentences with the new sounds in. Children will also practise writing the letters that represent the sounds.
Click on the picture below for a parent’s guide to ELS, which includes the order the sounds are taught and how to pronounce the sounds to support your child.
Below is the ELS progression map
