To Year 1

with Mrs Faulkner, Mrs Long, Mrs Walker and Miss Isherwood

Spring 1 

History on Our Doorstep – Wonderful Warwick

Our focus for this half term is ‘ History on our doorstep………. Wonderful Warwick’. This history based theme will offer the children the opportunity to find out about Warwick as a significant place in our local area. During the half term the children will use pictures, books, the internet and look at artefacts to help them to find out more about the past. They will ask and answer questions and think about how reliable the evidence is that they find. They will use a timeline to order events and objects. A visit to Market Hall museum in Warwick, as well as Warwick castle will bring all of this learning to life!

English

In english this half term we will be reading various texts including ‘The Tiger who came to tea’ and ‘The Fox and the Star’. We will explore some drama work where we hot seat as different characters from the story which will help the children to then write, for example, a diary entry as a character. We will continue to focus on accurate letter formation and sentence writing skills e.g using a capital letter, finger space, full stop and applying phonics learning when spelling. Our daily Little Wandle phonics sessions and 3 reading sessions a week continue to underpin all of our english learning.

Maths

Maths 

During this half term we will be learning to identify, represent, compare and order numbers to 20. We will use various manipulatives to help our understanding. Please see the diagram below showing some of the manipulatives we use.

We will then look again at one more/one less than and doubling and halving but use numbers to 20. The unit following on from numbers to 20 will focus on addition and subtraction within 20. The children will learn a strategies to add and subtract one digit numbers within numbers to 20.

Science 

In Science we will begin a unit focussing on animals. We will be identifying and naming the five different animal groups including mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish and birds. We will explore key characteristics of each animal group and learn about how they’re adapted to their habitat.  

In addition, during the term, we will continue to investigate the seasons. At the beginning of the term we will notice winter changes and learn about deciduous and evergreen trees. During this learning we will be focussing on how the changing seasons affect us and observe and compare the changing seasons by thinking about what we clues we can see and hear that show us the seasons are changing.  

Art and Design

Last half term the children enjoyed creating a playground for their Design and Technology project but this half term we will turn to Art and Design. Our units always include some sort of observation drawing but our main area of learning will be sculpture. We will learn about a modern artist called Darrell Wakelam who recycles cardboard to make a wide range of sculptures. Our final piece will be a relief sculpture.

PSHE 

Our Jigsaw unit this term is called Dreams and Goals. We will think about things like what we do well at, how we learn best, our attitude when faced with challenges and our feelings of success.

PE

PE this half term will be on Mondays and Fridays and children should come to school dressed in their PE kit, which consists of – black jogging bottoms (not leggings), a plain white polo top or a plain white round neck t-shirt, a green school jumper or cardigan and trainers.

Reading

Reading books need to be brought to school every Wednesday please. Reading books will be changed then and children will bring their Little Wandle book and a phonics reading book which they have chosen themselves.

Our expectation is that children read at least 3 times a week with an adult. 

Reading records will be checked every week. Please do jot down any reading at all that children are doing into their reading records so that we can reward their fantastic efforts.

Home learning

Home learning books will be sent home on Fridays to be returned to school on Wednesdays. Learning with Parents is optional and set every other week.

Websites to practise key skills at home:

Maths Links:

Use the following links to practise these key Year 1 number skills:

- Counting in 2s, 5s and 10s up to 100

- Recognising odd and even numbers

- Finding 1 more and 1 less than a given number

- Partitioning 2 digit numbers into tens and ones

- Number bonds and facts to 10 and 20

- Finding doubles up to 10 and finding halves from 20

English Links:

Use the following links to practise these key Year 1 reading and writing skills:

- Segmenting and blending all sounds

- Breaking longer words into syllables to read them

- Reading contracted words (I'm, don't, can't etc)

- Reading and spelling tricky words and common exception words

- Forming capital and lowercase letters correctly

- Writing sentences with capital letters, finger spaces and full stops

- Extending sentences using 'and' and other conjunctions (but, so, because, then, with)

- Developing sentences by adding adjectives and using different sentence openers

Other Learning Links:

Use the following links to practise knowledge and skills from other areas of the curriculum:

Activities to practise key skills at home:

                     Representing Numbers                 Maths                        Quick Maths

                                              Phonics              Common Exception Words               SPaG

                     Daily Online Activities         Maths and English Ideas          Practical Ideas

                                   KS1 Maths Games                     Year 1 Number Games

Resources from SEND Supported:

We work with a company called SEND Supported at school and they are releasing newsletters each week offering support and guidance to parents of children who many have additional needs in school. Please find below a link to these newsletters:

There are also lots of other resources and information available on their website. The 'Things to do Issue 2 - Resources' file has some lovely activities for all children regardless of whether they have additional needs or not. There are lots of great visual puzzles and games for children to play so please have a look if you can. There are also resources available now to support with developing children's memory skills in 'Thing to do Issue 3 - Resources.'