Welcome to Year 1

This year, your teachers and TA's are:

1N - Miss North and Mrs Hubbard

1I - Mrs Davies and Mrs Watras (Tuesday - Friday), Mrs Oliver (Mondays)

1M - Miss Mulligan and Mrs Cantwell (Monday - Wednesday), Mrs Oliver (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 out topic) and formal learning during the autumn term.  From November 2015, all lessons will be taught as a whole class.  There will be a continued focus on phonics as in June 2016, your child will take part in the phonics screen.  Your child will flourish and become so much more independent.

Year 1 Phonics - Read, Write Inc and the Phonics Screen June 2016

Please find attached the rhymes that accompany each sound taught in Read, Write Inc.

Your child will come home with a variety of real and nonsense words that they need to sound out and read.  If your child finds a particular word difficult to sound out, then please see Miss North who will give you a list of words containing the particular sound for you to support your child at home.

Summer Term  2016

RE - The children will be learning about Pentecost.

Ask your child - What happens during Pentecost?   What is the good news?

English - Your child will continue to learn how to write a series of sentences.  Please ensure that your child says a sentence and then writes those words.  They should spell all  common words correctly and use their phonics to spell other words correctly.  The children are also being taught grammar - conjunctions (and but  because so), ?  !  . at the end of sentences.  Ask your child what a prefix and suffix is.

Maths - the children are learning about the vocabulary of most, least, fewer, equal to.  They will be securing their ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide.  The children are also working on having a rapid recall of number pairs to 20 (addition and subtraction).

History - This term we are learning about Queen Elizabeth as part  of our history led topic.  The children will be learning about the monarchy and what the role of a king or queen is.   Linked to this the children will visit the Royal Mews in May 2016.   

Questions you can ask your child:

Who is the current queen?

Who is the queen married to?

How many years has Queen Elizabeth reigned?

What is the role of the queen?

Science - The children are learning about trees and plants in the school grounds.  They will be learning the names of common trees and plants.

When you are in the garden or out and about in the local area, talk to your child about the trees and plants you see.  Discuss what the trees and plants are called.  Look at similarities and differences between the shape and size of leaves and petals.

Questions you can ask your child:

What is the name of this plant/tree?  How do you know?

What part of the plant/tree is this?

What is the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees?

Art - The children are looking at pop art and creating pop art about the Queen.  The Castle and Sun painting by Paul Klee. Show your child various pictures and paintings of Queen Elizabeth and talk about them.

English

When reading with your child, identify and discuss the use of question marks (for asking questions) and exclamation marks (for exclaiming).   Look for plurals in a text - words with 's' and 'es' at the end.  Practise spelling words given in December 2015 following the spelling test.   Start practising your next set of spellings for our monthly spelling tests.

Maths

Talk to your child about directions - left, right, backwards, forwards and positional language - under, above, on top of etc. 

Science

Ask your child about what everyday objects in your house are made from.

What material is the chair/table/bed made from?

Ask your child to describe the materials. (The chair is hard and firm)

What adjectives would you use to describe the bed/chair/table?

History

Talk with your child about different forms of transport from the past. 

What was the first type of car like?

How did people travel in the air before modern airplanes?

Computing

Look at a variety of ebooks and electronic books that combine images and audio.  What do you like about them?  What would you change?

Winter

As you are out and about, talk about the seasonal changes that occur during winter.  What do some animals do?  What happens to the leaves on the trees?  How does the weather change?  Is the weather this year typical of winter weather?  Why not?

PSHE

Continue to encourage your child to be polite and respectful.  

Our Learning

Autumn Term 1

We are learning through the topic of 'Ourselves'.

Science Focus:

Questions you can ask your child:

What are the parts of your body called?

What are the major organs in your body and what do they do?

What are the bones in your body called?

What are our senses?

What do you think it is like when one of our senses doesn't work?

What does a guide dog do?

Towards the end of the half term, we will also be learning about the season of Autumn. 

Questions you can ask your child:

What is different about the leaves in Autumn?

What changes have happened to the weather?

Do any animals do things differently in Autumn?

History Focus:

What was it like for our grandparents?  We have already looked at what their school day was like and what TV programmes they liked to watch.  The children have agreed school today is better and although they prefer TV today, some children are quite taken with Bill and Ben!

Questions to ask your child:

What is different from granny's school day to yours?

Do you prefer TV in black or white or colour?

How much TV did granny watch?  How TV do you watch?

When did granny watch TV?  When  do you watch TV?

Autumn Term 2

This half term our topic is 'At the Zoo'.  To help with your child's learning, you can:

Talk about the different animal groupings of mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians and birds.  This will be covered in Science.

Look at the continents and oceans on a world map as we are studying these in Geography.

Discuss your child's favourite animals and identify whether they will see them on our zoo trip.

Help your child to recognise time on clocks such as o'clock and half past.

Reading Books

Your child is able to change and choose their own reading book on Mondays and Thursdays.  This promotes independence for your child and helps them to read for pleasure.

We would then like you to concentrate on:

1) Listening to your child read the book.   Whilst your child is reading praise them for reading words on sight and sounding out unknown words using their phonics.

2) Ask your children questions about the book.  These can range from simple questions based on what the child has just read through to asking your child to predict what might happen next and why they think this

3) Look at the targets in your child's reading record book.  When the teacher has seen your child meet one of these targets 3 times in school, they will highlight the target.   In the comments box in the reading record, you could write that you too have seen your child meet one of these targets.

4) Listen to your child re-read the book again and praise for increased fluency of reading.

The re-reading of a book and the development of increased fluency in reading is a key aspect to learning to read and understanding the text.  If you would like any more guidance on reading with your child, then please speak to your child's class teacher.  They will be able to support you in knowing if your child is stronger in decoding words (reading) or comprehension of the text.  Both are essential for your child to move up through the book bands. 

What you can do to help your child

1) Read with your child.

2) Practise reading the Read, Write Inc words that are sent home with your child.

3) Support your child to read and write the first 100 common words - www.highfrequencywords.org/first-100-high-frequency-word-lists.html

4) Count with your child from 0-100.  Asking questions such as:  What number is 1 less than? What number is 1 more than?  If you were putting these three numbers in order which number would come first?  Which number out of these numbers is the biggest?  Which number out of these numbers is the smallest?  Tell me how you know?

5) When completing household tasks such as laying the table, ask your child basic addition and subtraction questions.   E.g There are three forks on the table and there are five people having dinner.  How many more forks do we need?  

6) Talk to your child about the current season - What changes do they notice on the way home? 

Phonics

At St Thomas' we teach phonics through the Read, Write Inc scheme.   Please see the website for lots of useful information about the scheme: www.ruthmiskin.com/en/read-write-inc-programmes

Your child will have four Read Write Inc lessons a week (Tuesday - Friday).  Each lesson lasts for 45 minutes and is a mixture of teaching the children a new sound each day e.g, ay, ee, igh, ow and reading books that contain known sounds as well as writing sentences containing words with the specific sounds taught.   Your child will also be introduced to 'power words' to extend their vocabulary.  These relate to the content of the reading books.  Words that cannot be sounded out are referred to as 'Red words' and words that can be sounded out are referred to as 'Green words'.  The sounds are ordered into bands A - I and by the end of year 1, the children should be able to read the sounds and words containing them.  This is what is tested in the Year 1 phonics screen.

This scheme is started in Reception, where most children will start on Band A.   At end of year 1, the children should be on or have completed Band J.  Every eight weeks, the children are assessed (or sooner if their phonics teacher thinks they have made speedy progress) where the children move up through the bands.  If your child does not learn all the sounds in their band, they will have 1:1 tutoring daily for 10 mins, to help them embed those sounds.

If you have any queries or questions about Read, Write Inc and your child, please see your child's class teacher or Miss North.

Phonics Screen 2016

In the week beginning 13th June 2016, your child will take part in the national phonics screen.  They will be required to read 40 words, twenty real words and twenty nonsense words.  There is more information about the screen on https://www.gov.uk/government/.../phonics-screening-check-2015-materials

If you want to do extra reading of real and nonsense words, then you could do the following:

• Write real and nonsense words for your child to read.   You can find out the sounds they know by using the guidance on this page. 
• Point out real and nonsense words in the environment when you are out and about.  A common one is why it is 'night' and not 'nite'.

Blogging

Each week, the children in year 1 will write a blog about their learning for that week.  Two children will go to all the year 1 classes and ask them what they have enjoyed learning the most during the week.   Then they will write a blog (with the help of their teacher at the moment) and choose pictures to represent the learning.   This opportunity, allows children to develop their speaking and listening skills, their computing skills and for you to know what has been happening in school. 

At home, your child can respond to the class blog by going to:

St Thomas of Canterbury School web page.

Blogging

Children's Blogs

Year 1.

When your child types up their blog back to the class blog, it is sent to Miss North via email.  Miss North then checks and approves the blog before it is uploaded.  This ensures that the children can blog in a safe way. 

In class we look at the blog and talk about the children's views.  This is a great tool for the teachers to see what the children enjoy and try and teach more of these things.

Please help your child to participate by spending 5 - 10mins talking to them about the blog and writing a blog back.  Thank you!