Welcome to Year 1K!

Teacher: Mrs Dunn and Mrs Beaumont

Teaching assistant - Miss Moran

Spring 1:

Welcome to Year 1 class page! I hope you have had a fantastic Christmas holiday and are ready to continue your fantastic love of learning throughout our Spring term! Please read below to find out information about important dates and what you will be learning about this term!  

Literacy

Our literacy focus for the start of the Spring term will be based on the book 'Giraffes can't dance'. We will be focusing on the following steps to success during this unit and describing Gerald the Giraffe. 

- Capital letters

- Finger spaces

- Phonics

- Full stops

- Adjectives

- Conjunctions

- ?!

-Tall, fall and small letters

During our Literacy lessons this half term, we will be focusing on using adjectives and conjunctions to add detail to our writing and extend our sentences. We will be writing a character description for Gerald and writing a fact file all about giraffes using the key skills above. Throughout this term we will be working hard to write sentences independently by thinking of our sentence first, saying it out loud, writing it and then checking it. 

Maths

Our first unit in Spring is Number and place value within 20. Pupils will count within 20 and continue to build on their understanding of 1 more and 1 less. They will use a number line to 20 and learn to compare and order numbers to 20.

Topic

This terms unit in topic is all about our 'The Titanic'. We will be focusing on the following skills in Geography and History over the Spring term...

Science

This terms units in Science will be all about 'Animals including Humans'. Pupils will learn to:

• identify and name a variety of common animals including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals
• identify and name a variety of common animals that are carnivores, herbivores and omnivores
• describe and compare the structure of a variety of common animals (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including pets)
• identify, name, draw and label the basic parts of the human body and say which part of the body is associated with each sense

Religion

We use the schemes, Come and See and Caritas in our RE lessons. Below is an overview of what your child will cover over in the Spring term. 

The themes and topics will be:

Belonging - where we will be learning all abut baptism and how when we are baptised we are welcomed into the God's family. We will also look at signs and symbols to do with baptism.

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 Siddall 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 sheet in your child’s book bag for them to practice over the next week. The sheet 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 (31^st October), Spring 2 (27^th February) and Summer 2 (12^th June).  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.

Please see an overview of the topics we are learning this year: