Year 1

Welcome to Year 1

Mrs Ndisi, Mrs Walker, Mrs Good

We hope you have had a lovely, relaxing half term break and that the children are ready for another busy half term of exciting learning.

Aliens are coming!

 Our theme this half term is called “Aliens are coming”. During this theme, we will spend our Geography lessons investigating birds eye views to identify physical and human features around Binley Woods before creating maps of the local area. We will then use our maps to direct each other around Binley Woods using locational and directional language. Through our D&T lessons, we will develop our designing, making and evaluating skills as we create our very own spaceships.

Core Skills

In Core Skills this half term, the whole school will be focussing on ‘Developing Independence and Responsibility’. In Year One we will be trying particularly hard to identify different ways of caring for things in our learning environment and to independently select resources to support us in our learning.

English

In English this half term we will be enjoying lots of different stories based around our theme and two of the key texts we explore will include ‘We’re off to look for aliens’ and ‘Beegu’. We will be discussing the characters, settings and plots of these stories and making predictions about what we think may happen next. We will be using our inference skills to investigate the thoughts and feelings of characters. We will also be using bullet points to write lists, labels to annotate images and developing our use of adjectives through descriptive writing. We will continue to say our sentences before we write them and alongside remembering our capital letters, finger spaces and full stops we will also explore more interesting sentence openers.

Phonics and Spelling

In Phonics and Spelling sessions this half term we will be spending time exploring our Phase 5 digraphs further. We will cover 3 sounds per week and will spend lots of time reading and writing words with these sounds in whilst comparing the Phase 5 digraph to other digraphs which make the same sound. We will also begin investigating the number of syllables in words and practise breaking longer words into syllables to read and write them. We will continually revise our Phase 2-5 tricky words and try to spell them correctly in our independent writing.

Maths

In Maths this half term we will be covering two maths units. We will start off by looking at ‘Numbers within 20’ and during this unit we will be counting forwards and backwards within 20 beginning at zero and then from any given number. We will be identifying and representing numbers using objects and pictorial representations including a number line. We will use the language of more than, less than, equal to, most and least. We will also count in multiples of two and five. Our second maths unit of the half term will be ‘Addition and subtraction within 20’, during which we will representing and using number bonds and related subtraction facts within 20. We will add and subtract one-digit and two-digit numbers to 20 and read, write and interpret mathematical statements involving addition and subtraction. We will use concrete objects and pictorial representations to solve one-step problems that involve addition and subtraction.

Science

In Science this half term we will be covering the unit “The Power of Force”. We will be exploring how objects start to move and will discover that force is needed to make something start moving but also to stop something moving and also make a moving object change direction. We will learn how air can be a force and will use our scientific enquiry skills to investigate how different materials affect how well objects can move. We will complete the unit by spending some time studying magnets and sorting and grouping objects using different criteria.

P.E. and Forest School
PE this half term will continue to be on Mondays and Forest School will be continue to be on Thursdays. Forest School kit required includes wellies, spare socks, joggers, a tshirt, a hooded jacket or jumper, a hat, scarf and a pair of gloves. All of these need to be named and in a separate named bag to PE kits please. Please can we ask that all children have all of the necessary kit in school on these days to ensure they do not miss out on important learning.

Show and Tell

Show and Tell will continue to be on Friday afternoons and we will continue to write which group’s turn it is on the weekly letter every week. Please could we remind everyone that Show and Tell is a speaking and listening exercise and if children choose to bring something in then it needs to be linked to an area of our learning and they should be ready to talk about their item and answer one or two questions about it too. Achievements from outside of school, such as dancing, football, gymnastics awards are always welcome!

Reading

Reading books will continue to be changed once a week and children will bring 2 books home at a time. Our expectation is that children read at least 3 times a week with an adult and use the reading questions and activity grid to extend their reading experiences.

Reading records will be checked every Friday and those children who have read 3 times will receive a star sticker on their bookmark (stays at school). As the number of star stickers builds up to 3, children will receive a round sticker to come home with. Once their bookmark is full, children will receive a certificate.

Please do jot down any reading that children are doing into their reading records so that we can reward their efforts. We do ask that children always have their reading books and reading record in their book bags to make the most of all reading opportunities at school.

Home Learning

Weekly letters and weekly homework will continue to be sent home on a Friday. Homework will be collected back in and reviewed on a Wednesday and will be as follows:

Maths – Schofield and Sims book – 2 pages

Reading – At least 3 times a week with an adult along with discussion using question bookmarks sent home. An optional extra is the completion of a chosen activity from the grid sent home.

Spellings – Daily practice using the look, say, cover, write, check method.

Thank you for your support

If you have any questions about any of the information above or about your child’s learning and progress I am always happy to chat at the end of the day. If this isn’t possible then please do make an appointment with the office and I’d be glad to speak with you another time.