Welcome to Year 1K!

Teacher: Miss Kozij

Teaching assistant - Miss Moran

SUMMER:

Welcome back Year 1!  I hope you have all had a lovely Easter break with all of your loved ones and are ready for our Summer term.

Literacy

Our literacy focus for the start of the spring term will be based on the poetry book 'Meerkat Mail' by Emily Gravett, this story takes us on a journey of a Meerkat names Sunny, Sunny lives in the Kalahari desert with his family. Under the hot sun, Sunny and his brothers and sisters work together, play together, eat together, learn together, and sleep together. Sunny needs a break, so he decides to take a trip to visit some relatives. Through a series of postcards--that actually flip open for children to read--Sunny documents his journey for his family. But as he travels from the barnyard through the forest to the city, Sunny realizes there's no place like home. During this unit we will, be practicing the spelling of the days of the week, as well as exploring letter writing and creating our very own postcard using our SPAG objectives. We will aim to include:. 

- Capital letters

- Finger spaces

- Phonics

- Full stops

- Adjectives

- Conjunctions

- ?!

Maths

During our Maths lessons this half-term, we will be extending our knowledge on place value and addition and subtraction by learning all about multiplication and division, we will use prior knowledge we have built up over the year so far to support us with this new learning and use lots of maths resources, equipment and songs to aid us. Below are the objectives we will be learning and the order we will focus on them. 

Topic

Our topic for this half term is... Sensational Safari's. During this unit, children will be immersed in the topic with a launch day showcasing the life and culture of Africa. Children will then build on their geographic skills to locate Africa and some of it's countries. After which, children will look at African biomes and look at these in relation to the equator. Children will then compare the location of the Massai Mara with their location. Children will continue to look at the lives of the Masai Mara people and create a tourism leaflet.

We will have a geography focus and will be learning how to...

Science

In Science this half term we will be learning all about Plants. Through this we will be creating our very own mini gardens to observe, we will plant seeds, and look after them using water, light and suitable temperatures to grow and stay healthy. 

We will be learning how to...

- Observe and describe how seeds and bulbs grow into mature plants.

- Find our and describe how plants need water, light and a suitable temperature to grow and stay healthy.

Religion

In our RE lessons this half-term, we will be focusing on Pentecost, where we will learn all about what Pentecost is, why it is so important and how it was the birth of the church.

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 Berry 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: