Welcome to Year 1

** 1 Lion - Mrs Downing **

** 1 Crystal - Miss Southall**

* Supported by Mrs Sheppard and Miss Tait *

Key Information:

Reading 

We love books in Year 1! 

Reading will take place in various formats, every day in school. Your child will read to adults in groups and one-to-one where appropriate. Every day begins with 10 minutes of the teacher reading to the children for pleasure. Reading frequently at home is essential. The children will be rewarded by moving up the Reading Ladder each day their diaries have been signed, so please ensure they bring their reading diaries and reading book to school each day. Children are rewarded with dojo points and anyone at the top of the ladder on a Friday will receive a special reading star sticker!

Home reading books will be changed every Friday. School books should be read at least 3 times per week to help with fluency. Of course, other books from home can be read for pleasure. Sets of Rising Stars Online books will be allocated regularly. Once read, please complete the online quiz. 

Water bottles

It is important that children bring a water bottle into school every day. These bottles will be sent home each night to be washed and refilled. Please ensure bottles are the 'sport's cap' variety and do not have large open tops as these easily spill. 

Grab-a-Bags

If your child requires a 'Grab-a-Bag' for lunch, please fill in the slip at home if possible. Blank slips can be obtained from any member of staff or in the ‘Grab Bag’ baskets in the classroom.

PE

PE for both classes will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Children should come to school wearing their PE kit on these days. Trainers with velcro are preferable. Pumps are optional and if chosen, should be kept in school in a pump bag. Please ensure long hair is tied back and any earrings are removed on these days.

Class Dojo

Your children can now earn dojo points for positive behaviour, learning and displaying our school values. We will also keep you updated with our learning and achievements through our class stories so please ensure your notifications are active. We love to hear your feedback so please respond with likes and comments. 

Please note: private Dojo messages will be responded to within 48hours so please contact the school office for any urgent/going home messages. 

This Half Term our topic is​

'Once Upon a Time...'

This is our Literacy based topic and is based on Traditional Tales and Fairy Tales. We will use the Jolly Postman as he visits the homes of our favourite fairy tale characters as our introduction, then delve deeper into some well-known tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk. We will be thinking about good / bad characters, what makes a good story and the common elements of fairy tales.

Homework ideas to further your learning: Bring them in to earn extra dojo points!

Visit your local library to borrow fairytales to read at home - keep a reading journal.

Write a letter to your favourite character.

Make a cartoon strip or comic book of your favourite fairytale.

Write a recipe for a spell - similar to the one we mixed in the cauldron.

Invent a game based on your favourite story - use ideas from the games we played during The Jolly Postman trail.

In English, we are still working hard on our reading, writing and spelling through phonics and are continuing to work on writing in sentences, using adjectives, capital letters and full stops.

Our Talk for Writing text this half term is Jack and the Beanstalk. We are still concentrating on using all the elements of our Writing Toolkits including: capital letters, spaces between words and full stops as well as beginning to extend our sentences using connectives and adjectives. ​ We will continue to use our Kinetic Letters scheme, for handwriting.

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This half term, we will continue working with practical equipment in maths to develop our understanding before moving on to pictorial and abstract representation.

In maths we will be:

Counting forwards and backwards in 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s

Rapid recall of number bonds to 10 and 20

Recognise, partition and compare numbers to 100

Finding the inverse of an addition or subtraction

Multiplication - repeated addition of groups and arrays

Division as sharing

Finding halves and quarters of shapes

Finding halves and quarters of numbers

Recognising half and quarter turns

Adding and subtracting 1 digit & 2 digit numbers to 20

​Learning that addition can be done in any order

Practising our doubles

Recognising and naming 2D and 3D shapes​

To support your child with this at home you could:

Practise counting forwards and backwards

Practise reading and writing numbers up to 100

Ask questions eg  What two numbers can be added to make 10/20 ? What is the total?

How many different ways can you make 8?

Can you give me 1 more fork? How many do I have now?

If I had 23 sweets and I ate one, how many left?

Practise​ number bonds to 10 and 20 eg: '8 and what makes 10?'

Play 'Hit the Button' addition and subtraction games online

Have a daily session on the White Rose 1 Minute Maths downloadable app

Complete activities on Doodle Learning

Look at house numbers, look at how they sometimes count in 2s

Practise counting in 2s 5s and 10s - forwards and backwards.

Science

This half term, we will be exploring Plants and growing.

 We will be growing our own plants, finding out what they need to grow, observing how it grows and measuring it each week.

We will be naming parts of a plant- roots, stem, leaves and flowers.

We will be naming a variety of common plants including garden plants, wild plants and trees and those classified as deciduous and evergreen.

    RE

In RE this half term, we will be asking the question:

How do we look after God's World?

We will explore the Christian Creation story and will become creators ourselves!  Then, we will discuss and learn how we can look after God's wonderful world.