Welcome to Year 1

These are our teachers and teaching assistants who help us with our learning: 

Teaching Staff: Mrs Thomas   and Mr. Dunne             

Higher Level Teaching Assistant: Mrs Horrex

                                                                             Teaching Assistants: Miss Bensley, Mrs. Mayhew, Miss Paterson and Miss Frost (maternity leave)

Summer 1 - Houses and Homes

This half term, we will be building on our prior learning about Toys to help us continue to learn about life in the past and how life was similar or different to now. We will be using a variety of sources (books, artefacts, videos) to help us investigate how our homes have changed over different periods. In our English sessions, we will be independently embedding our writing skills- ensuring we are consistently using full stops and capital letters as well as trying to enhance our writing with adjectives, a range of punctuation and joining words. We will have a big emphasis on using word mats and sound mats to support their spelling in sessions too. In maths, we will be starting to some simple multiplication and division. The children will use practical objects to solve problem and move onto using arrays in their books. Through this topic of learning we will also be learning to count in multiples of 2, 5 and 10.

Please see the curriculum booklet (attached below) for further information about the curriculum coverage for Spring 1. The home learning grid for this half term is attached below.  

PE days are below

Mr. Dunne's Class - Wednesday and Friday

Mrs Thomas' Class- Tuesday and Wednesday

Spring 2 - Incredible Animals

This term, the children are now working in a whole class teaching environment where they will all have an activity to complete each session to support their learning. These activities continue to be practical and linked to each child's learning ability while adults helicopter around the room and support where needed. The children have next steps and tricky challenges to move their learning on. 

This half term, we will be focusing on learning about animals. We will learn how to group animals into different categories and also learn some new vocabulary to talk about what they eat (herbivore, omnivore, carnivore). Our reading texts in English will focus on animals too and we will learn how to add ing onto the end of a word as well as exploring how to put things in alphabetical order. 

Please see the curriculum booklet (attached below) for further information about the curriculum coverage for Spring 1. The home learning grid for this half term is attached below.  

PE days are Monday and Thursday for both classes. 

Spring 1 - Toys

This term, the children are now working in a whole class teaching environment where they will all have an activity to complete each session to support their learning. These activities continue to be practical and linked to each child's learning ability while adults helicopter around the room and support where needed. The children have next steps and tricky challenges to move their learning on. 

In our learning, we will be learning about Toys and thinking about how to answer the question- What were toys like 100 years ago compared to now? They will learn about the differences between old and new toys. In DT they will learn about wheels and axles and make their own toy car and will begin to design and make their own puppet.

Please see the curriculum booklet (attached below) for further information about the curriculum coverage for Spring 1. 

PE days are Monday and Thursday for both classes. 

Autumn 2

Space and Polar Regions

In the second half of the Autumn Term, the children continue to access our COOL jobs (continuous provision) which are linked to our theme and story texts for the week  whilst doing small group work tasks with an adult. We continue to build on the children's independent learning skills this half term by introducing 5 a day in the morning and more formal guided reading activities. 5 a day gives the children a chance to practise their maths fluency by answering 5 maths questions linked to their prior learning. In our guided reading sessions, the children will complete activities linked to reading or their phonic skills over the week in a carousel.  

Please see the curriculum booklet (attached below) for further information about the curriculum coverage for Autumn 2. 

PE days are Monday and Wednesday for both classes. 

Autumn 1

Under the Sea, Pirates, Fantastic Beasts

In the first half of the Autumn Term, children in Year 1 independently access play based learning activities (continuous provision) whilst completing learning activities in small groups with an adult. We call our continuous provision activities COOL jobs - choosing our own learning - and these link to our focus text for the week. 

PE days are Monday and Wednesday for both classes. 

Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural in Year 1

• We have voted for our new School Councillors and have fortnightly meetings to talk about any issues that arise.
• Our Eco Committee members help us to care for our environment by organising our recycling and waste management.
• We have also voted for our Sports Ambassadors, who will working with other Sports Ambassadors across the school to develop our sports provision, equipment and ensure we have fun sporting activities available at lunch time.  

How can you help your child in Year 1?

Reading at home

This term we are exciting to be continuing to use our new reading scheme, Rocket Phonics, from Foundation Stage to Year 2. The books are all phonetically plausible and based on your child's phonics knowledge. 

We hope that you are able to read with your child as regularly as possible and record any comments in their yellow log. We will be having Rapid Reading for two weeks in each half term. During Rapid Reading weeks, children read daily with an adult in a guided reading style session. There is a specific focus for the reading weeks e.g. phonics knowledge, decoding, common exception words etc. and is very beneficial in helping childrens' reading skills improve. We hope you will also see improvements  in your child's reading from Rapid Reading and thank you for any comments and feedback. 

Phonics

This term  we will  continue to build on children's phonics learning from the Foundation Stage. This will include consolidating our knowledge of phase 3 and developing our knowledge of  phase 5 sounds. We use the scheme 'Rocket Phonics' to deliver our phonics teaching and use the corresponding reading books. We ensure that children are reading books that match their phonics knowledge. Please see the websites below to play some games at home: 

www.phonicsplay.co.uk

www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3-games.html 

Maths at home           

At the beginning of this term, we will be consolidating our counting skills within 20 - Counting on and back, writing and recognising numbers. W will also be learning about position and direction through using the beebots to explore positional language. 

Home learning is due back into school on a Thursday. Please ensure your child brings their home learning book back each week so that we can check which task they have completed. We will send home learning books back out on a Friday. Please remember only 1 piece needs to be completed each week, although you are welcome to complete more if your child wishes.