Welcome to Year 1

This year, your teachers and TA's are:

1B - Mrs Brind, Mrs Watras and Mrs Perry

1D - Mrs Davies and  Mrs Hubbard

1S - Mrs Obende, Mrs Sturgess (Monday & Tuesday) and Mrs Cantwell (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday)

Year 1 is an important year. Your child will be following the new national curriculum. They will be following the whole school behaviour chart, where your child has an increased responsibility for their behaviour. At the end of each lesson your child will be expected to assess their learning using the self assessment charts. Your child will have a mixture of continuous provision (learning activities that the children choose which links to prior learning and our topic) and formal learning during the Autumn Term. From November 2018, all lessons will be taught as a whole class. There will be a continued focus on phonics as in June 2019, your child will take part in the  Government Phonic Screening Test. Your child will flourish and become much more independent.

Week beginning 15th July 2019

This week we will be learning about:

• RE - Neighbours - We will thinking about our topic of 'Neighbours' and thinking about what we need to do to be a better global 'Neighbour'.
• English - We will be retelling events from the story 'Zeraffa Giraffa'. Please encourage your child to tell you what has happened in the story and practise writing sentence with your child that include adjectives and conjunctions. They should ensure that they have punctuated their sentence correctly and checked that it makes sense. 
• Maths- We will be naming and describing 2D and 3D shapes. Please help your child by finding and naming a variety of shapes around the home.  
• Computing - We will be taking pictures and editing them. 
• PE- Games - We will be thinking about working together as a team and playing team games. We will be learning to pass a ball accurately. 
• Science - We will be discussing what we have learnt throughout the topic and talking about the season of 'Summer'. 
• DT/Art - We will be designing and then making a fruit salad.
• Geography - We will be creating a leaflet about Grays.

Reminder - You are invited into class every Thursday between 8.40am and 8.55am to share a story with your child. 

This week in Maths we have been learning about addition. We tried to use facts that we already know to help us. We remembered to put the biggest number first when we were adding up and found out that this made it easier to find the total.

In RE we have been learning to recognise our neighbours and how they need to be treated with respect. In Design and Technology and computing, we designed and made a jam sandwich and used the IPADS to record making them. We particularly enjoyed eating them and thought that they tasted delicious.

World Book Day 2019

The children in Year 1 enjoyed showing their costumes to their friends. To celebrate World Book Day, the children were able to choose a story to listen to and base some work on. Mrs Bring read 'The Cat in the Hat', Mrs Davies read 'Five Minutes Peace' and Mrs Obende read 'The Tiger that came to tea'. 

"I enjoyed making my own rhyme similar to 'The Cat in the Hat'. I said 'The Frog on the log." by Ema.

"It was fun listening to the story of 'The Tiger that came to Tea'. I made a shopping list just encase a tiger comes to tea at my house." Isabella.

"I liked role playing the story. I made my own tea party." Madeline.

"I liked it when the elephant was trying to get some peace and quite in the story 'Five minutes peace'. It made me laugh."

We were very lucky to have some visitors in school from 'Open the Book'. They told us the story about loving our neighbour and reminded us that Jesus always wants us to show love to our neighbours by doing kind things.

Please enjoy these activities with your child:

• Read a book, talking about the characters and the events that have taken place. Ask your child to retell the story back to you, using language from the story. When your child is reading, encourage them to find the 'special friends' (two letters that make one sound) and tell you what sound they make. Your child could then complete a book review, explaining why they liked the story. You could use the questions from our reading workshop to help your child with their comprehension of the story. 
• Practise recognising these sounds in words: 'ce' as in once, 'au' as in saucer, /ar/ as in dancer, 'gh' as in ghost, 'gn' as in gnome.
• Practise spelling words from the Year 1 Common Exception word list. They could write sentences that included these words. 
• Practise recognising and spelling words from the phonic list that was sent home. Your child should practise all of the sounds on the list, paying particular attention to the highlighted sounds. 
• Ask your child to keep a diary of what they are doing each day. This will help them to practise using full stops and punctuation correctly. This is also an opportunity to practise handwriting with your child.
• Practise identifying pairs of numbers that total 20. This should include subtraction facts. The children could use a variety of methods to help them, such as drawing a number line or tens frame. 
• Practise counting in 2s, 5s and 10s, linking this to Times Tables.
• Practise telling the time to the hour and half hour.