Welcome to Year 1

Teacher: Mrs Dunn/Miss Kozij

Teaching assistant - Miss Moran

Autumn 1:

Welcome to Year 1 class page! Please read below to find out information about important dates and what you will be learning about this term!  

English

Our literacy focus for the start of the Autumn term will be based on the book 'Not Now Bernard'. We will be focusing on the following steps to success during this unit and starting to form simple sentences using these key skills: 

- Capital letters

- Finger spaces

- Phonics

- Full stops

-Tall letters

During our Literacy lessons this half term, we will be focusing on using tall letters, full stops, capital letters and correct spacing between words. We will be retelling the story through drama and freeze frames and orally retelling the story. Throughout the unit we will then move onto writing our sentences independently by thinking of our sentence first, saying it out loud, writing it and then checking it. 

After 'Not Now Bernard', we will be exploring 'The Shopping Basket', exploring writing captions, list and labels. 

Maths

Our first unit in the Autumn term is place value within 10. Pupils will learn to confidently count up to 10, recognise objects and different representations of numbers to 10 and order numbers using a number line. 

Topic

This terms unit in topic is called 'Where do we live?'. We will be focusing on the following skills in Geography over the Autumn term...

Geographical Skills and fieldwork:

-Use world maps, atlases and globes to identify the United Kingdom and its countries, as well as countries, continents and oceans.

- Use simple compass directions (North, South, East and West) and locational language [for example, near and far; left and right], to describe the location of features and routes on a map

-use simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds and the key human and physical features of its surrounding environment.

Human and physical geography

-Use basic geographical vocabulary to refer to:  key physical features, including: beach, cliff, coast, forest, hill, mountain, sea, ocean, river, soil, valley, vegetation, season and weather 

key human features, including: city, town, village, factory, farm, house, office, port, harbour and shop

Science

This terms units in Science will be all about 'Everyday Materials'. Pupils will learn to:

-  distinguish between an object and the material from which it is made

-identify and name a variety of everyday materials, including wood, plastic, glass, metal, water, and rock 

-describe the simple physical properties of a variety of everyday materials

- compare and group together a variety of everyday materials on the basis of their simple physical properties.

Religion

This half term we will be looking at the story of Creation. We will us the bible to retell the story and focus on what this teaches us. How should we treat the world and all that is in it? We will then recognise that though people cannot see God, they can sense his presence through the awe and wonder experienced in the beauty and order of Creation.

We know that Pope Francis wrote a letter, called Laudato Si’, about the gift of Creation and the importance of taking care of the world as it is everyone’s home. We will explore this further and look at how we can care for the world. Towards the end of the unit we will look at how the church teaches us that God gave human beings the responsibility for taking care of the world and its people and in doing this, we show love for God and each other.

As part of our Catholic ethos. we love to involve family life within our school life and may ask you for photos of special events or people, such as baptism, Christmas and other important celebrations to reflect upon in our weekly Collective Worship sessions. 

PE

This half term you will need to come into school wearing your PE kit on our PE day which is a Monday. In PE you will be learning about invasion and team games skills with Mr Casey outside and circuits skills in the hall. 

Homework

Reading – 10 minutes a night

Listening to your child read for 10 minutes a night makes a significant difference in their progress and attainment. It helps them practice key reading strategies and skills, develop their comprehension skills and supports their overall fluency and accuracy, which are vital skills they need for the future. Every Friday an eBook will be assigned to your child’s online account based upon the sounds they have learnt in phonics that week. The children will have practiced this book in their guided reading sessions so will be familiar with the text. The purpose of them practicing it again at home is to become more familiar with these sounds and fluent when reading them.

Your child will also choose a reading for pleasure book. This is a book that you can both read and enjoy together and encourage reading for pleasure. This will be a physical book that your child takes home and they will be given the opportunity to choose and change every Friday. As it is a reading for pleasure book, it is not necessarily aimed at your child’s reading level, therefore can be challenging, which is why we are asking for an adult to read this and your child to join in where possible. The reading for pleasure book is important as it is how we will help build a love of reading together.   Please ensure your child brings this back to school every Friday ready to change in our school Library.

Reading eggs – once a week      https://readingeggs.co.uk

Reading eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities. Children love the games, songs, golden eggs and other rewards which, along with feeling proud of their reading, really motivate children to keep exploring and learning.

My Maths and Mathseeds – once a week       https://mathseeds.co.uk/

Every Friday, your class teacher will set home learning for your child on MyMaths.co.uk. This will be based upon what they have learnt that week so your child can practice the skills taught at home to reinforce key strategies.  

Mathseeds is an online website that your child can use to develop pupils’ confidence and fluency in Maths and the interactive lessons provide step-by-step examples to break down learning into manageable chunks. The log in for this is the same one you use for reading eggs.

Phonics home learning – once a week

Every Friday, we will send home a phonics learning log in your child’s book bag for them to practice over the next week. The sheet in their book each week will have the list of sounds your child has learnt that week, words and sentences for them to read and write with these sounds in and then a list of tricky words that the children need to know. These words will be familiar to them and ones they have practiced in phonics sessions.

You can then practice these sounds further on fastphonics (www.readingeggs.co.uk/fast-phonics-games), which is the same log in as reading eggs.

Learning logs – Autumn  2, Spring 2 and Summer 2

Last year we introduced our project-based home learning to replace the homework board we previously used. Pupil, parent and teacher voice all showed that project based home learning was the preferred style of home learning as it gave children more freedom to learn about real life world events, share personal experiences and it has helped motivate them to engage in home learning as it is child managed. It encourages the children to be more independent, inquisitive and provides more opportunities for outdoor learning together. This can be completed in your learning log, a scrap book of your choice or it can be uploaded onto Seesaw.

Instead of completing these every half term, we have reduced this to three half terms a year to make it more manageable. They will therefore be given out on the first Monday of Autumn 2, Spring 2 and Summer 2.  We ask that their project is brought into school on the last week of that half term to share and celebrate with their peers. You will be given a sheet of paper that will be stuck in your child’s learning log that will outline what the project is and ideas of activities you can do.