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 Term our topic is

'Where do I Live?'

This is our Geography based topic. We will begin by thinking about our school and our homes, leading out into the local area and then further afield into the 4 countries of the UK. We will learn about addresses, basic compass directions and maps.

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

Do your own research on our local area and create a fact sheet.

Sketch pictures of places in the local area such as Mary Stevens Park and the nature within it.

Look at a map of Stourbridge and see if you can spot any places you are familiar with.

Talk about the different types of buildings in the area and their uses, such as homes, shops, factories and cafes. 

Create a map of an area locally, showing where different things are.

In English, we will be working hard on our reading, writing and spelling through phonics and will be focusing on word level writing while we consolidate our skills. We will practise our Kinetic Letters handwriting everyday, as well as reading and completing phonics sessions everyday. We will do this by basing our work on a picture book for the first few weeks and then completing a grammar unit called Grammarsaurus. After half term will will start learning through the Talk 4 Writing approach, where we will begin by writing a recount of our trip to Wild! We will focus on writing sentences with capital letters, full stops and finger spaces as well as using our phonics to spell carefully and making sure our writing makes sense.

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In Maths this half term we will continue working with numbers up to 10, practising simple addition and subtraction number sentences. Towards the end of the term, we will work on 3D and 2D shape. We will practice fluency, reasoning and problem-solving in the classroom and in the outdoor 'Hive'. We will be working with practical equipment in to develop our understanding before moving on to pictorial and abstract representation.

To support your child with this at home you could:

Practise counting forwards and backwards

Practise reading and writing numbers up to 20

Give 1 more and 1 less than a number​ - 'What is 1 more than 6?'

Practise​ number bonds to 10 e.g. '6 and what makes 10?' 

​Double numbers up to double 10

Comparing numbers e.g. ’8 is greater than 2’ or ’6 < 7’

Science

In science this half term we will learn about animals. We will think about ways animals can be grouped; such as how they move, where they live and what they eat.

    RE

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

What makes a book special?

Towards the end of term we will focus our learning on the Christmas story.