Welcome back everyone! What a fantastic start to the new year we have had, and a very busy one too! We are now venturing into the second half of the spring term in which we have lots more fun learning to achieve. I am looking forward to the new topics this term and I hope you are also!
As part of our school expectations, we will continue to remind pupils of our school values of Respect, Good Manners, Patience, Perseverance and Honesty and they will continue to earn Dojo points for good behaviour, attitudes and effort. Your child’s homework grid will be sent home at the beginning of the term and will focus on reading, phonics and handwriting plus support for Maths. Homework books will be given out on a Friday and will need to be handed in by the following Wednesday at the latest. PE lessons will take place on Monday afternoons. Please ensure that your child has their PE kit each week, and is not wearing earrings on PE days.
Punctuality and good attendance is key to supporting your child's education and ensures they do not miss vital learning.
Homework:
Please encourage your child to complete their homework each week. Homework is given out on a Friday and is expected to be completed and returned no later than the following Wednesday. We do encourage adults to support with homework so as to develop your child's understanding of skills and strategies to fulfil the task.
It is important that your child learns to practice their phonic sounds as this will support their blending skills for reading and with spelling. It is crucial that you read with your child as much as possible at home to support their phonics and also their understanding of different texts. I must impress on you the importance of your child reading regularly as this supports their development in their oracy and writing skills also. It is vital that they learn their weekly vocabulary as this is linked to the book they will be reading in class the following week.
PE:
PE will take place on Monday afternoons. Please ensure your child comes to school in their full P.E kit - Yellow P.E shirt with the school's logo, black joggers or shorts or leggings, black pumps and their school green sweatshirt. Also make sure that your child has their earrings removed or covered by plasters from home on this day. In P.E. we have introduced Orienteering, which links to other subjects in the curriculum. Pupils develop map skills and set out to find signs around the school which have questions and activities to fulfil in a subject area. This a new and fun way for your children to develop their skills throughout the curriculum.
English:
In English this half term, our theme is 'Family Album'. We will start by reading traditional stories; making predictions on what has been read so far and identifying and discussing the main events in a story. We will consider the features we find in traditional tales and why a story becomes 'traditional'. Identify and discuss the main characters in stories, making basic inferences about what is being said and done. Following traditional stories, we are going to develop our understanding of recounts. Reading from non-fiction and fictitious texts we are going to eventually focus on events in our own lives with our families.
* Phonics will continue throughout the day and there are some links in the website star for you to support your child at home.
Maths:
For the first week we will be consolidating all our previous learning and testing ourselves through revision. Then we will be exploring numbers to 40 in a variety of ways. We will be counting to 40 in different ways and writing numbers to 40. As we progress we will be comparing numbers and looking at number patterns. We then move on to developing our learnt knowledge in addition and subtraction to develop our skills in recognising visual and proportional representations required for using bar modelling to solve word problems. Finally this half term, we will learn the foundations of equal groupings, repeated addition, arrays and doubling and we will be able to apply that knowledge to solve word problems.
We will be also using Math knowledge to focus on our 2 and 5 times tables plus developing our understanding of halving and doubling.
Science:
This half term, as part of our biology topic we will continue focusing on plants and trees. Identifying and naming a variety of common wild and garden plants. Discovering the names of parts of plants, what they need to grow and survive. We will be growing our own vegetables and observing how they grow. We will continue to focus on the seasons, this half term we are going to learn about spring.
History:
As part of our 'Family Album' topic, in History we will be learning the distinction between past and present in one’s own family; placing a few events and objects in order by using common phrases to show the passing of time and knowing where some people fit into a chronological framework. We will focus on events, people and change looking at the difference between past and present in your own family’s recent history, using simple stories and other sources to show that we know and understand key features of events. We will show that we know and understand about our own and our family’s past in different ways and understand historical concepts and use them to make simple connections and draw contrasts. We will use differing sources to answer simple questions about our own and our family’s past and ask and answer questions about our own and our family’s past through observing and handling a range of source.
Computing:
In computing we will be learning about animation and creating an interactive story. We will learn how to manipulate the properties of our story by changing the images, adding animations and sound as well as typing, copying and pasting pages. We will develop our understanding by discussing e-books and by sharing our own book with others on a class display-board. We will make valid comparisons between paper book and e-books. We will then apply our knowledge of paper books when developing our e-books. We will be able to save our animated story files, using a memorable file name, and in turn retrieve it ourselves.
If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to discuss these with us at the beginning or end of the school day or arrange an appointment through the school office.
Myself and the other members of the Year 1 team are really looking forward to another exciting and fun half term!
As always, we all hope that you stay healthy, safe and happy!
From all the staff in Year 1.
Miss Woodhouse - Class Teacher
Mrs Haji- Teaching Assistant
Mrs Maqsood- Special Support Assistant
Mrs Ali - PPA Teacher
Mrs Rohel- Volunteer Student